It had occurred to Fouchard to inaugurate a traffic with them.  Roaming about the country in every direction, peering with their sharp eyes into ditches and cattle sheds, they had become his purveyors of dead animals.  Never an ox or a sheep within a radius of three leagues was stricken down by disease but they came by night with their barrow and wheeled it away to him, and he paid them in provisions, most generally in bread, that Silvine baked in great batches expressly for the purpose.  Besides, if he had no great love for them, he experienced a secret feeling of admiration for the francs-tireurs, a set of handy rascals who went their way and snapped their fingers at the world, and although he was making a fortune from his dealings with the Prussians, he could never refrain from chuckling to himself with grim, savage laughter as often as he heard that one of them had been found lying at the roadside with his throat cut.

“Your good health!” said he, touching glasses with the three men.  Then, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand:  “Say, have you heard of the fuss they’re making over the two headless uhlans that they picked up over there near Villecourt?  Villecourt was burned yesterday, you know; they say it was the penalty the village had to pay for harboring you.  You’ll have to be prudent, don’t you see, and not show yourselves about here for a time.  I’ll see the bread is sent you somewhere.”

Sambuc shrugged his shoulders and laughed contemptuously.  What did he care for the Prussians, the dirty cowards!  And all at once he exploded in a fit of anger, pounding the table with his fist.

“Tonnerre de Dieu! I don’t mind the uhlans so much; they’re not so bad, but it’s the other one I’d like to get a chance at once—­you know whom I mean, the other fellow, the spy, the man who used to work for you.”

“Goliah?” said Father Fouchard.

Silvine, who had resumed her sewing, dropped it in her lap and listened with intense interest.

“That’s his name, Goliah!  Ah, the brigand! he is as familiar with every inch of the wood of Dieulet as I am with my pocket, and he’s like enough to get us pinched some fine morning.  I heard of him to-day at the Maltese Cross making his boast that he would settle our business for us before we’re a week older.  A dirty hound, he is, and he served as guide to the Prussians the day before the battle of Beaumont; I leave it to these fellows if he didn’t.”

“It’s as true as there’s a candle standing on that table!” attested Cabasse.

“Per silentia amica lunoe,” added Ducat, whose quotations were not always conspicuous for their appositeness.

But Sambuc again brought his heavy fist down upon the table.  “He has been tried and adjudged guilty, the scoundrel!  If ever you hear of his being in the neighborhood just send me word, and his head shall go and keep company with the heads of the two uhlans in the Meuse; yes, by G-d!  I pledge you my word it shall.”