In less than five minutes Peyrol was dismounting in front of a low, long addition to a tall farmhouse with very few windows, and flanked by walls of stones enclosing not only the yard but apparently a field or two also. A gateway stood open to the left, but Peyrol dismounted at the door, through which he entered a bare room, with rough whitewashed walls and a few wooden chairs and tables, which might have been a rustic café. He tapped with his knuckles on the table. A young woman with a fichu round her neck and a striped white and red skirt, with black hair and a red mouth, appeared in an inner doorway. “Bonjour, citoyenne,” said Peyrol. She was so startled by the unusual aspect of this stranger that she answered him only by a murmured “Bonjour,” but in a moment she came forward and waited expectantly. The perfect oval of her face, the colour of her smooth cheeks, and the whiteness of her throat forced from the Citizen Peyrol a slight hiss through his clenched teeth. “I am thirsty, of course,” he said, “but what I really want is to know whether I can stay here.” The sound of a mule’s hoofs outside caused Peyrol to start, but the woman arrested him. “She is only going to the shed. She knows the way. As to what you said, the master will be here directly. Nobody ever comes here. And how long would you want to stay?” The old rover of the seas looked at her searchingly. “To tell you the truth, citoyenne, it may be in a manner of speaking for ever.” She smiled in a bright flash of teeth, without gaiety or any change in her restless eyes that roamed about the empty room as though Peyrol had come in attended by a mob of shades. “It’s like me,” she said. “I lived as a child here.” “You are but little more than that now,” said Peyrol, examining her with a feeling that was no longer surprise or curiosity, but seemed to be lodged in his very breast. “Are you a patriot?” she asked, still surveying the invisible company in the room. Peyrol, who had thought that he had “done with all that damned nonsense,” felt angry and also at a loss for an answer. “I am a Frenchman,” he said bluntly. “Arlette!” called out an aged woman’s voice through the open inner door. “What do you want?” she answered readily. “There’s a saddled mule come into the yard.” “All right. The man is here.” Her eyes, which had steadied, began to wander again all round and about the motionless Peyrol. She moved a step nearer to him and asked in a low confidential tone: “Have you ever carried a woman’s head on a pike?” Peyrol, who had seen fights, massacres on land and sea, towns taken by assault by savage warriors, who had killed men in attack and defence, found himself at first bereft of speech by this simple question, and next moved to speak bitterly. “No. I have heard men boast of having done so. They were mostly braggarts with craven hearts. But what is all this to you?”