e are the Wolves in a body, saying there are
Devourers here from M. Hardy's, and offering them battle--unless the
Devourers will give up the factory, and range themselves on their side."

"It was a trap, there can be no doubt of it!" cried Olivier, looking at
Morok and Sleepinbuff, with a threatening air; "if my mates had come, we
were all to be let in."

"I lay a trap, Olivier?" stammered Jacques Rennepont. "Never!"

"Battle to the Devourers! or let them join the Wolves!" cried the angry
crowd with one voice, as they appeared to invade the house.

"Come!" exclaimed the host. Without giving Olivier time to answer, he
seized him by the arm, and opening a window which led to a roof at no
very great height from the ground, he said to him: "Make your escape by
this window, let yourself slide down, and gain the fields; it is time."

As the young workman hesitated, the host added, with a look of terror:

"Alone, against a couple of hundred, what can you do? A minute more, and
you are lost. Do you not hear them? They have entered the yard; they are
coming up."

Indeed, at this moment, the groans, the hisses, and cheers redoubled
in violence; the wooden staircase which led to the first story shook
beneath the quick steps of many persons, and the shout arose, loud and
piercing: "Battle to the Devourers!"

"Fly, Olivier!" cried Sleepinbuff, almost sobered by the danger.

Hardly had he pronounced the words when the door of the large room,
which communicated with the small one in which they were, was burst open
with a frightful crash.

"Here they are!" cried the host, clasping his hands in alarm. Then,
running to Olivier, he pushed him, as it were, out of the window; for,
with one foot on the sill, the workman still hesitated.

The window once closed, the publican returned towards Morok the instant
the latter entered the large room, into which the leaders of the Wolves
had just forced an entry, whilst their companions were vociferating in
the yard and on the staircase. Eight or ten of these madmen, urged by
others to take part in these scenes of disorder, had rushed first into
the room, with countenances inflamed by wine and anger; most of them
were armed with long sticks. A blaster, of Herculean strength and
stature, with an old red handkerchief about his head, its ragged
ends streaming over his shoulders, miserably dressed in a half-worn
goat-skin, brandished an iron drilling-rod, and appeared to direct the
movements.