ad
on his aunt's neck and whispered slyly in her ear:--

"I don't know, but he has got gold. If you'll feed me high for a month,
perhaps I can find out his hiding-place; he has one, I know that."

"Father's got gold!" whispered La Tonsard to her husband, whose voice
was loudest in the uproar of the excited discussion, in which all
present took part.

"Hush! here's Groison," cried the old sentinel.

Perfect silence reigned in the tavern. When Groison had got to a safe
distance, Mother Tonsard made a sign, and the discussion began again on
the question as to whether they should persist in gleaning, as before,
without a certificate.

"You'll have to give in," said Pere Fourchon; "for the Shopman has gone
to see the prefect and get troops to enforce the order. They'll shoot
you like dogs,--and that's what we are!" cried the old man, trying
to conquer the thickening of his speech produced by his potations of
sherry.

This fresh announcement, absurd as it was, made all the drinkers
thoughtful; they really believed the government capable of slaughtering
them without pity.

"I remember just such troubles near Toulouse, when I was stationed
there," said Bonnebault. "We were marched out, and the peasants were cut
and slashed and arrested. Everybody laughed to see them try to resist
cavalry. Ten were sent to the galleys, and eleven put in prison; the
whole thing was crushed. Hey! what? why, soldiers are soldiers, and you
are nothing but civilian beggars; they've a right, they think, to sabre
peasants, the devil take you!"

"Well, well," said Tonsard, "what is there in all that to frighten you
like kids? What can they get out of my mother and daughters? Put 'em in
prison? well, then they must feed them; and the Shopman can't imprison
the whole country. Besides, prisoners are better fed at the king's
expense than they are at their own; and they're kept warmer, too."

"You are a pack of fools!" roared Fourchon. "Better gnaw at the
bourgeois than attack him in front; otherwise, you'll get your backs
broke. If you like the galleys, so be it,--that's another thing! You
don't work as hard there as you do in the fields, true enough; but you
don't have your liberty."

"Perhaps it would be well," said Vaudoyer, who was among the more
valiant in counsel, "if some of us risked our skins to deliver the
neighborhood of that Languedoc fellow who has planted himself at the
gate of the Avonne."

"Do Michaud's business for him?" said