After about three
hours' poking about over all the farm, they met again outside this
building, and I could hear their gabble plainly. The smallest among
them, the piping chore-boy, he was for spitting me without mercy;
and the milking-lass would toast me with a hay-fork, that she would,
and six thousand livres should set her up forever.
In the midst of their rattling came two soldiers, who ordered them
about, and with much blustering began searching here and there,
and chucking the maids under the chins, as I could tell by their
little bursts of laughter, and the "La M'sieu's!" which trickled
through the hay.
I am sure that one such little episode saved me. For I heard a
soldier just above me poking and tossing hay with uncomfortable
vigour. But presently the amorous hunter turned his thoughts
elsewhere, and I was left to myself, and to a late breakfast of
parched beans and bread and raw eggs, after which I lay and
thought; and the sum of the thinking was that I would stay where
I was till the first wave of the hunt had passed.
Near midnight of the second day I came out secretly from my
lurking-place, and faced straight for the St.
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