"I am weary, my child; kiss me for good-night."
"But do not forget to awake me, Father Jean-Claude, if you start before daybreak."
"Rest easy; you will come with us," he answered, as he climbed the narrow stairs.
All was silence without, save that the deep tones of the village clock told the hour of eleven. Jean-Claude sat down and unfastened his shoes. Just then his eyes fell upon his musket hung over the door. He took it down, slowly wiped it, and tried the lock. His whole soul was in the work in which he was engaged.
"It is strange--strange! The last time I fired it was at Marengo--fourteen years ago, and it seems but yesterday."
Suddenly the frozen snow crunched beneath a foot-fall. He listened. Two taps sounded upon the window-panes. He ran and opened the door, and the form of Marc-Dives, his broad hat stiff with ice, emerged from the darkness.
"Have you warned Materne, Jerome, Labarbe?"
"It is none too soon; the enemy are advancing."
"Yes; along their whole line. I have come fifteen leagues since morning to give you warning."
"Good. We must make the signal: a fire upon Falkenstein."
Hullin's face was pale, but his eyes flashed. He again put on his shoes, and two minutes after, with his cloak upon his shoulders and his staff firmly clinched in his hand, he opened the door softly, and with long steps followed Marc-Dives along the path to Falkenstein.
From midnight until six o'clock in the morning a flame shone through the darkness from the summit of Falkenstein.
All Hullin's friends, and those of Marc-Dives and Mother Lefevre, with high gaiters bound around their legs, and old muskets upon their shoulders, trooped in the silence of the woods to the gorges of the Valtin. The thought of the enemy pouring over the plains of Alsace to surprise their glens and defiles nerved every heart and arm. The tocsin at Dagsbourg, at Walsch, and at Saint-Quirin ceased not to call the country's defenders to arms.
Imagine the Jaegerthal, at the foot of the old _burg_, in the early morning hour, when the giant arms of the trees begin to break through the shadows, and when the approach of day softens somewhat the intense cold of the night. The snow lies deep upon the ground. { 176} Imagine the old saw-pit with its flat roof, its heavy wheel glittering with icicles; a fire of sawdust shining from within, but paling before the morning twilight, and around the fire fur caps and slouched hats and dark faces crowded together; further on, in the woods, and along the winding valley, were other fires lighting up groups of men and women seated on the snow.