"Have you warned the mountaineers--Materne, Jerôme, Labarbe?"
"It is but just in time: the enemy has passed."
"Yes, along the whole line. I have come fifteen leagues through the snow since morning to tell you."
"Good! we must give the signal--a large bonfire on the Falkenstein."
Hullin was very pale. He put on his shoes again. Two minutes after, with his thick great-coat flung over his shoulders, and his stick in his hand, he softly opened the door, and was following Marc with hasty strides along the footpath of the Falkenstein.
From midnight until six o'clock in the morning, a bright flame shone through the darkness on the summit of the Falkenstein, and the whole mountain was astir.
All the friends of Hullin, of Marc Divès, and of Dame Lefévre, their legs encased in long gaiters, their old guns slung over their shoulders, were silently marching through the woods in the deep stillness of the night towards the gorges of the Valtin. The thought of the enemy crossing the plains of Alsace to come and surprise the dwellers in the defiles and mountains was uppermost in the minds of all. The tocsins of Dagsburg, of Abreschwiller, of Walsch, of Saint-Quirin, and of all the other villages, never ceased summoning the defenders of their country to arms.
You must now picture to yourself the Jägerthal at the foot of the old _burg_ during the period of an extraordinary fall of snow, at that early hour of the morning when the tall shadows of the trees begin to be visible through the gloom, and the piercing cold of the night is lessened at the approach of dawn. You must picture to yourself the old saw-works, with its broad flat roof, its heavy wheel loaded with icicles, the low interior dimly lit up by a fire of fir-logs, whose glow is beginning to pale in the faint but clear light of early morning; and all around this fire is a confused jumble of seal-skin caps, felt hats, dark profiles towering one above the other, and pressed close together like a living wall. Farther on, the whole length of the woods, in all the windings of the valley, other beacon-fires lighted up, in their crimson glow, groups of men and women huddling together in the snow.
The agitation was beginning to grow calmer. As the daylight grew stronger and stronger, people began to recognise each other.