t window. If there are any
Chouan gentlemen here, we must not let them escape."

Then the oldest of the gendarmes, a man well accustomed to hunting this
sort of game, hung back and looked at him queerly.

"There are none--I'll answer for that," he said. "Certainly not Monsieur
Ange de la Mariniere, or he would have been out long ago--and none of us
ever felt sure that he was mixed up in Chouannerie--"

"What are you talking about?" cried Simon. "Hold your tongue, and do
your duty. The General ordered us to break into the house and search it.
Why, you know yourself that it is the headquarters of this plot."

"If so, if I hear rightly, the master of it has paid for his Chouannerie
with his life," said the man gravely, still holding back, and watching
Simon with a dogged steadiness. "Our mates have caught the other
gentlemen--they could not fail--and as for me, Monsieur Simon, I don't
feel inclined to take any more orders from that General of yours. To me,
he seems like a madman. There's private malice behind all this. It is
not the sort of justice that suits me--to kill a gentleman and shoot his
servants and burn his house down. I tell you, fellows, I don't like
it--there are limits to what the police ought to do, and we shall find
ourselves in the wrong box, if we go further without the Prefect's
warrant."

"Obey your orders, or you'll pay for it!" shouted Simon. "Come on, men!"
and he ran towards the house.

"Be off, or we fire!" cried a voice from the window above.

"All right, Maitre Joubard, don't fire; we know you are a loyal man,"
said the spokesman of the gendarmes. "I am going straight back to
Sonnay, to see what Monsieur le Prefet says to all this. Do you agree?"
he turned to his comrades, who had drawn up behind him, and who
answered, even the man who had been tied to the tree, by a quick murmur
of assent. "Come, Monsieur Simon, I advise you to cast in your lot with
us; you have had too much to do with that madman. Everybody hates him.
They sent him down here because they could not stand him in the army."

As Simon turned his back and walked sulkily away, the gendarme added:
"Come down, some of you, and look for your master. He may be still
alive."

The men in the room above looked at each other. They could not and did
not believe that Monsieur Joseph was dead. To his old servants, it was
one of those shocks too heavy for the brain to bear; the thought stunned
them. Large tears were rolling down old J