The voice of Billet interrupted the pair.
"If you are going to lay snares, Master Pitou, it seems to me it is time you were jogging. Father Clovis is going your way."
"I am off," and he went out by the kitchen door, while Catherine went up to her room, where she bolted the door.
The forest was Pitou's kingdom and when he had left Clovis to go home, he felt easy about what he had undertaken to do.
He thought of running to Boursonne and warning Viscount Isidore; but he might not be believed and the warning might not be heeded.
He had not a doubt that at the windows of Billet's room and of his daughter's, they two were on the alert. All the tragedy or its failure depended on him. If he let the viscount pass within rifle range, he would let him march to his death.
In fact, Billet, sure that the nobleman would not marry a farmer's daughter, had resolved to wipe out the insult done him in blood.
Suddenly Pitou, lying on the ground in a clump of willow, heard the gallop of a horse.
Billet must have heard it also for he came out of the house; and Ange had not a doubt that the willow copse which he had chosen to spy Catherine's window had for the same reason recommended itself to the farmer.
As the latter advanced, he slipped back and slid down into the ditch.
The horse crossed the road at sixty paces, and as a shadow was soon detached from it, the rider must have leaped off, and turned the steed loose. It went on without stopping.
There was ten minutes of dreadful silence.
The night was so black that Pitou, reckoning his eyes better than Billet's, hoped that he alone saw the shadow stealing towards the house.
But at the same moment, as the shadow went up under Catherine's window, Pitou heard the click of a hammer going on full cock on the gun.
The shadow did not notice but rapped three times on the shutter.
Pitou quivered--Catherine would surely blame him for not having passed the warning as he had promised.
Pitou heard the hammer fall and saw the priming flash; the powder in the touchhole did not catch and the living target received no bullet.
At the same moment Catherine opened her window. She saw all and cried: "Up, it is my father!" she almost dragged Charny in at the casement.
The farmer had his second barrel to fire and he thought: