"Yes; but do not forget to awake me, Papa Jean-Claude, if you start before daybreak." "Do not trouble thyself. It is understood thou shalt come with us." And seeing her mount the stair and disappear in the garret: "Isn't she afraid of stopping in the nest, that's all!" said he to himself. The silence was great outdoors. Eleven o'clock had struck from the village church. The good man was sitting down to take off his boots, when he caught sight of his musket suspended above the door: he took it down, wiped it, and drew the trigger. His whole soul was intent on the business in hand. "It is all right," he murmured: and then in a grave tone: "It is curious.... The last time I held it ... at Marengo ... was fourteen years ago, and yet it seems like yesterday!" Suddenly the hardened snow cracked under a quick footstep. He listened: "Someone!" At the same time two little sharp taps resounded on the panes. He ran to the window and opened it. The head of Marc Divès, with his broad hat stiff with the frost, bent forward from the darkness. "Well, Marc, what news?" "Hast thou warned the mountaineers--Materne, Jérome, Labarbe?" "Yes, all." "It was time: the enemy has passed." "Passed?" "Yes, along the whole line. I have walked fifteen leagues through the snow since this morning to announce it to thee." "Good; the signal must be given: a great fire on the Falkenstein." Hullin was very pale. He put on his boots. Two minutes later, his large blouse on his shoulders and his stick in his hand, he softly opened the door, and with long strides followed Marc Divès on the way to the Falkenstein. CHAPTER VII RISING OF THE PARTISANS From midnight till six in the morning a flame shone through the darkness on the summit of the Falkenstein, and the whole mountain was on the alert. All the friends of Hullin, Marc Divès, and of Mother Lefèvre, their long gaiters on their legs and old muskets on their shoulders, journeyed, through the silent woods, toward the gorges of the Valtin. The thought of the enemy traversing the plains of Alsace to surprise the passes, was present to the minds of all. The tocsins of Dagsburg, Abreschwiller, Walsch, and St. Quirin, and of all the other villages, began to call the defenders of the country to arms. Now you must picture to yourself the Jägerthal, at the foot of the old castle, in unusually snowy weather, at that early hour when the clumps of trees begin to creep out of the shadow, and when the extreme cold of night softens at the approach of day. Picture, also, to yourself the old Sawyerie, with its flat roof, its heavy wheel burdened with icicles, the low interior dimly lit up by a pine-wood fire, whose blaze fades away in the glimmer of the coming dawn; and, around the fire, fur bonnets, caps, and black profiles, gazing one over the other, and squeezing close together like a wall; and farther on, in the woods, more fires lighting up groups of men and women squatting in the snow.