"You swear to me to do your utmost to gain entrance to the place?" "I swear nothing at all," replied Marc, whose brown cheeks were suffused with a sudden red. "I leave here all that I have: my property, my wife, my comrades, Catherine Lefévre, and yourself--my oldest friend. If I do not return, I shall be a traitor; but, if I do return, Jean-Claude, you shall give me a little explanation of the question you have just put to me: we have a little account to settle together!" "Marc," said Hullin, "forgive me; I have suffered too much these last few days! I have been wrong; misfortune makes me mistrustful. Give me your hand! Go, save us, save Catherine, save my child! I say this to you now; we have no resource but in you." Hullin's voice trembled: Divès allowed himself to be moved by it; only he added: "For all that, Jean-Claude, you should not have spoken so to me at such a moment; let us never speak of it again! I will leave my skin by the way, or else return to deliver you; this very evening at night time, I will set forth! The _kaiserlicks_ are already encircling the mountain; no matter, I have a good horse, and, besides, I've always been lucky." By six o'clock the loftiest of the mountain tops were wrapped in darkness. Hundreds of fires sparkling at the bottom of the gorges announced that the Germans were preparing their evening meal. Marc Divès descended the footpath on tiptoe. Hullin listened a few seconds longer to the sound of his comrade's footsteps; then he directed his own, in a meditative mood, towards the old tower where the head-quarters had been established. He raised the thick woollen covering which shut in the owl's nest, and saw Catherine, Louise, and the others crouching round a little fire which threw its feeble light upon the grey walls. The old farm-mistress, seated on a block of oak, with her hands clasped round her knees, was watching the flame with fixed eye, compressed lips, and livid complexion; Louise, leaning with her back against the wall, seemed absorbed in a dream; Jerôme, standing behind Catherine, with his hands crossed upon his stick, touched with his thick otter-skin cap the rotten roof. All were sad and dispirited. Hexe-Baizel, who was lifting up the lid of a saucepan, and Doctor Lorquin, who was scraping the mortar of the old wall with the point of his sword, alone preserved their wonted aspect. "Here we are," said the doctor, "come back to the time of the Triboques. These walls are more than two thousand years old. A good quantity of water must have flowed from the heights of the Falkenstein and the Grosmann, by the Sarre to the Rhine, since a fire was lit in this tower."