antillon, is excellent; a cup will cheer us
to-night."

"Doubtless," replied St. Georges, in a similar voice; then sinking it,
he asked beneath his teeth, "Why not warn me before?"

"Oh! red wine, monsieur, above all," replied Boussac, loudly. "There
is little white grows here." Again lowering his tone: "I feared to
distress, to alarm you. You had the child. Now I am forced to do so.
He has been joined by five others at different points since we passed
Flavigny. All armed and all masked. Yes," in the loud voice, "and with
a _soupe a l'oignon_, as monsieur says. They are around us," sinking
it again. "I judge they mean attack. Well, we know _we are_ soldiers:
they should be brigands, _larrons!_ Shall we encounter them, give them
a chance to show who, and what they are?"

"Ay," said St. Georges. "Observe, here is a small church and
graveyard; wheel in and let us await them. I see them now, even in the
dusk."

Swiftly, as on parade, the order was given, and as swiftly executed.
The black horse wheeled by the side of the chestnut of the
_chevau-leger_ into the open graveyard--the gate of the place hung on
one hinge down toward the road from which the church rose
somewhat--and then St. Georges in a loud voice said:

"Halt here, comrade. Our horses are a little blown. We will breathe
them somewhat."

It was a wretched, uncared-for spot into which they had ridden, the
church being a little, low-built edifice of evidently great antiquity,
and doubtless utilized for service by the out-dwellers of
Aignay-le-Duc, which lay half a league further off, and some sparse
lights of which might be now seen twinkling in the clear, frosty air
beneath a young moon that rose to the right of the village. In the
graveyard itself there was the usual heterogeneous accumulation of
tombstones and memorials of the dead; here and there some dark-slate
headstones; in other places wooden crosses with imitation flowers
hanging on their crossbars, covered with frozen snow; in others, huge
mounds alone, to mark the spots where the dead lay.

"Not bad," said the mousquetaire, as he glanced his eye round the
melancholy spot, "for an encounter, if they mean one.--Steady, _mon
brave_," to his horse, "steady!--Ah! here comes one. Well, we have the
point o' vantage. We are in the churchyard; they have to come up the
rise to attack us. _Peste!_ what can they want with two soldiers?"

St. Georges arranged his child under his arm more carefully, gathered