"Bravo, _fourline_! now you are my own dear love again. Calm yourself. We will find him again, that wretch of a Rodolph, and the Chourineur too. Come, pluck up, old man; we will yet work our will on them both. I say it, on both!" "Well, then, you will not forsake me?" cried the brigand to the Chouette in a subdued tone, mingled, however, with distrust. "If you do leave me, what will become of me?" "That's true. I say, _fourline_, what a joke if Tortillard and I were to 'mizzle' with the 'drag,' and leave you where you are--in the middle of the fields; and the night air begins to nip very sharp. I say, it would be a joke, old cutpurse, wouldn't it?" At this threat the Schoolmaster shuddered, and, coming towards the Chouette, said tremulously, "No, no, you wouldn't do that, Chouette; nor you, Tortillard. It would be too bad, wouldn't it?" "Ha! ha! ha! 'Too bad,' says he, the gentle dear! And the little old man in the Rue du Roule; and the cattle-dealer and the woman in Saint Martin's Canal; and the gentleman in the Allée des Veuves; they found you nice and amiable, I don't think--didn't they--with your 'larding-pin?' Why, then, in your turn, shouldn't you be left to such tender mercy as you have showed?" "I'm in your power, don't abuse it," said the Schoolmaster. "Come, come, I confess I was wrong to suspect you. I was wrong to try and thump Tortillard; and, you see, I beg pardon; and of you too, Tortillard. Yes, I ask pardon of both." "I will have you ask pardon on your knees for having tried to beat the Chouette," said Tortillard. "You rum little beggar, how funny you are!" said the Chouette, laughing loudly; "but I should like to see what a 'guy' you will make of yourself. So on your knees, as if you were 'pattering' love to your old darling. Come, do it directly, or we will leave you; and I tell you that in half an hour it will be quite dark, though you don't look as if you thought so, old 'No-Eyes.'" "Night or day, what's that to him?" said Tortillard, saucily. "The gentleman always has his shutters closed." "Then here, on my knees, I humbly ask your pardon, Chouette; and yours also, Tortillard! Will not that content you?" said the robber, kneeling in the middle of the highway. "And now will you leave me?" This strange group, enclosed by the embankment of the ravine, and lighted by the red glimmer of the twilight, was hideous to behold. In the middle of the road the Schoolmaster, on his knees, extended his large and coarse hands towards the one-eyed hag; his thick and matted hair, which his fright had dishevelled, left exposed his motionless, rigid, glassy, dead eyeballs--the very glance of a corpse. Stooping deprecatingly his broad-spread shoulders, this Hercules kneels abjectly, and trembles at the feet of an old woman and a child!