myself with except for having, now and then,
buttered my bread on both sides; and I call on Saint-Labre, who is there
over the chimney-piece, to witness that I have never said one word about
the Gars. No, my good friends, I have not betrayed him."

"Very good, that will do, cousin; you can explain all that to God in
course of time."

"But let me say good-bye to Barbette."

"Come," said Marche-a-Terre, "if you don't want us to think you worse
than you are, behave like a Breton and be done with it."

The two Chouans seized him again and threw him on the bench where he
gave no other sign of resistance than the instinctive and convulsive
motions of an animal, uttering a few smothered groans, which ceased when
the axe fell. The head was off at the first blow. Marche-a-Terre took it
by the hair, left the room, sought and found a large nail in the rough
casing of the door, and wound the hair about it; leaving the bloody
head, the eyes of which he did not even close, to hang there.

The two Chouans then washed their hands, without the least haste, in a
pot full of water, picked up their hats and guns, and jumped the gate,
whistling the "Ballad of the Captain." Pille-Miche began to sing in
a hoarse voice as he reached the field the last verses of that rustic
song, their melody floating on the breeze:--

"At the first town
Her lover dressed her
All in white satin;

"At the next town
Her lover dressed her
In gold and silver.

"So beautiful was she
They gave her veils
To wear in the regiment."

The tune became gradually indistinguishable as the Chouans got further
away; but the silence of the country was so great that several of the
notes reached Barbette's ear as she neared home, holding her boy by the
hand. A peasant-woman never listens coldly to that song, so popular is
it in the West of France, and Barbette began, unconsciously, to sing the
first verses:--

"Come, let us go, my girl,
Let us go to the war;
Let us go, it is time.

"Brave captain,
Let it not trouble you,
But my daughter is not for you.

"You shall not have her on earth,
You shall not have her at sea,
Unless by treachery.

"The father took his daughter,
He unclothed her
And flung her out to sea.

"The captain, wiser still,
Into the waves he jumped
And to the shore he brought her.

"Come, let us go, my girl,
Let us go to the war;
Let us go, it is time.

"At the first town
He