"You idiot!" said Guild sharply as Darrel strolled up, his features blandly defiant.
"Go on with what you were saying to Michaud," insisted Darrel, unruffled by his reception.
"Come, Harry--this is downright damn foolishness. If you've let the waggon go on, you'll have to foot it to Quellenheim. You can't stay here!"
"Because, you infernal butter-in, you'll get mixed up in a particularly nasty mess. And it doesn't concern Yankees, this mess we're in, Michaud and I."
"Oh hell!" said Darrel; "go on and talk, Michaud!"
"Are you going to poke your nose into this?" demanded Guild.
"See here, Harry! Your sticking by me is gratuitously silly and it annoys me. You don't have to. This isn't any of your business, this mess."
Darrel lighted a cigarette and sat down on the terrace steps. Guild glared at him.
"Will you go to the devil!" he snapped out.
"If things go wrong they'll make a clean sweep of us all, I tell you," said Guild. "Once more, Harry, will you mind your own business?"
Guild turned to Michaud: "What were you saying?"
The forester, controlling his anger and emotion, continued the story of the sniper near Trois Fontaines. Then he outlined the miserable affair of the hill pasture.
"There remains for us now only two courses," he ended. "Either we turn franc-tireur and make our bivouac yonder in the forest, or we gather our people at The Pulpit, lie there tonight, and at daylight strike out for the Dutch frontier."
"There is a little hole in the rocks at The Pulpit--scarce large enough to be called a cave. Since the war came upon us, foreseeing necessity, my men have carried arms and provisions to The Pulpit--well hidden, Monsieur. I think, now, that it is a better refuge than this house."
The three men looked up at the house. Michaud made a hopeless gesture: "I suppose _they_ will destroy it, now. God knows. But if Monsieur Paillard be truly dead as we now believe, and his poor body lies rotting under the ruins of Wiltz-la-Vallée, then there is nobody to mourn this house excepting the old forester, Michaud.... And I think he has lived on earth too long."
He went slowly toward the house, entered it. One by one all the lighted windows grew dark. Presently he reappeared drawing the door-key from his pocket. Very deliberately he locked the door from the outside, looked in silence at the darkened house, and, facing it, quietly removed his hat.