he was thirsting for our blood, and lying in wait
fo us at every turn of events. Presently he got
up and took his leave; and the miller bolted
him out, and stumbled off to bed. Then we fell
asleep, and slept sound and long.

The next morning, when I awoke, I saw
Amante, half raised, resting on one hand, and
eagerly gazing, with straining eyes, into the
kitchen below. I looked too, and both heard
and saw the miller and two of his men eagerly
and loudly talking about the old woman, who
had not appeared as usual to make the fire in
the stove, and prepare her master's breakfast,
and who now, late on in the morning, had been
found dead in her bed; whether from the effect
of her master's blows the night before, or from
natural causes, who can tell? The miller's
conscience upbraided him a little, I should say, for
he was eagerly declaring his value for his
housekeeper, and repeating how often she had
spoken of the happy life she led with him. The
men might have their doubts, but they did not
wish to offend the miller, and all agreed that the
necessary steps should be taken for a speedy
funeral. And so they went out, leaving us in
our loft, but so much alone, that, for the first
time almost, we ventured to speak freely, though
still in a hushed voice, pausing to listen
continually. Amante took a more cheerful view of
the whole occurrence than I did. She said that,
had the old woman lived, we should have had to
depart that morning, and that this quiet
departure would have been the best thing we could
have had to hope for, as, in all probability,
the housekeeper would have told her master of
us and of our resting-place, and this fact would,
sooner or later, have been brought to the
knowledge of those from whom we most desired to
keep it concealed; but that now we had time
to rest, and a shelter to rest in, during the first
hot pursuit, which we knew to a fatal certainty
was being carried on. The remnants of our
food, and the stored-up fruit, would supply us
with provision; the only thing to be feared was,
that something might be required from the loft,
and the miller or some one else mount up in
search of it. But even then, with a little
arrangement of boxes and chests, one part might
be so kept in shadow that we might yet escape
observation. All this comforted me a little;
but, I asked, how were we ever to escape? The
ladder was taken away, which was our only
means of descent. But Amante replied that she
could make a sufficient ladder of the rope lying
coiled among other things, to drop us down the
ten feet or so—with the advantage of its being
portable, so that we might carry it away, and
thus avoid all betrayal of the fact that any one
had ever been hidden in the loft.

During the two days that intervened before
we did escape, Amante made good use of her
time. She looked into every box and chest
during the man's absence at his mill; and finding
in one box an old suit of man's clothes,
which had probably belonged to the miller's
absent son, she put them on to see if they would
fit her; and, when she found that they did, she
cut her own hair to the shortness of a man's,
made me clip her black eyebrows as close as
though they had been shaved, and by cutting up
old corks into pieces such as would go into her
cheeks, she altered both the shape of her face
and her voice to a degree which I should not
have believed possible.

All this time I lay like one stunned; my body
resting, and renewing its strength, but I myself
in an almost idiotic state—else surely I could not
have taken the stupid interest which I remember
I did in all Amante's energetic preparations for
disguise. I absolutely recollect once the feeling
of a smile coming over my stiff face as some new
exercise of her cleverness proved a success.

But towards the second day, she required me
too to exert myself; and then all my heavy
despair returned. I let her dye my fair hair and
complexion with the decaying shells of the
stored-up walnuts, I let her blacken my teeth,
and even voluntarily broke a front tooth the
better to effect my disguise. But through it
all I had no hope of evading my terrible
husband. The third night the funeral was over,
the drinking ended, the guests gone; the miller
put to bed by his men, being too drunk to help
himself. They stopped a little while in the
kitchen, talking and laughing about the new
housekeeper likely to come; and they too went
off, shutting, but not locking the door.
Everything favoured us: Amante had tried her ladder
on one of the two previous nights, and could, by
a dexterous throw from beneath, unfasten it
from the hook to which it was fixed, when it
had served its office; she made up a bundle of
worthless old clothes in order that we might the
better preserve our characters of a travelling
pedlar and his wife; she stuffed a hump on
her back, she thickened my figure, she left her
own clothes deep down beneath a heap of others
in the chest from which she had taken the man's
dress which she wore; and with a few francs in
her pocket—the sole money we had either of us
had about us when we escaped—we let ourselves
down the ladder, unhooked it, and passed into
the cold darkness of night again.

We had discussed the route which it would be
well for us to take while we lay perdues in our
loft. Amante had told me then that her reason for
inquiring, when we first left Les Bochers, by
which way I had first been brought to it, was to
avoid the pursuit which she was sure would first
be made in the direction of Germany; but that
now she thought we might return to that
district of country where my German fashion of
speaking French would excite least observation.
I thought that Amante herself had something
peculiar in her accent, which I had heard
M. de la Tourelle sneer at as Norman patois; but
I said not a word beyond agreeing to her
proposal that we should bend our steps towards
Germany. Once there, we should, I thought,
be safe. Alas! I forgot the unruly time that
was overspreading all Europe, overturning all
law, and all the protection which law gives.

How we wandered—not daring to ask our
way—how we lived, how we struggled through