Tignonville stared.  “It was timely, I admit,” he said.  “But it is no uncommon thing.  Probably it has its nest here and lays daily.”

“Young man, this is new-mown hay,” the minister answered solemnly.  “This cart was brought here no further back than yesterday.  It smells of the meadow, and the flowers hold their colour.  No, the fowl was sent.  To-morrow it will return, and the next, and the next, until the plague be stayed and I go hence.  But that is not all.  A while later a second hen appeared, and I thought it would lay in the same nest.  But it made a new one, on the side on which you lie and not far from your foot.  Then I knew that I was to have a companion, and that God had laid also for him a table in the wilderness.”

“It did lay, then?”

“It is still on the nest, beside your foot.”

Tignonville was about to reply when the preacher grasped his arm and by a sign enjoined silence.  He did so not a moment too soon.  Preoccupied by the story, narrator and listener had paid no heed to what was passing in the lane, and the voices of men speaking close at hand took them by surprise.  From the first words which reached them, it was clear that the speakers were the same who had chased La Tribe as far as the meeting of the four ways, and, losing him there, had spent the morning in other business.  Now they had returned to hunt him down; and but for a wrangle which arose among them and detained them, they had stolen on their quarry before their coming was suspected.

“’Twas this way he ran!” “No, ’twas the other!” they contended; and their words, winged with vile threats and oaths, grew noisy and hot.  The two listeners dared scarcely to breathe.  The danger was so near, it was so certain that if the men came three paces farther, they would observe and search the haycart, that Tignonville fancied the steel already at his throat.  He felt the hay rustle under his slightest movement, and gripped one hand with the other to restrain the tremor of overpowering excitement.  Yet when he glanced at the minister he found him unmoved, a smile on his face.  And M. de Tignonville could have cursed him for his folly.

For the men were coming on!  An instant, and they perceived the cart, and the ruffian who had advised this route pounced on it in triumph.

“There!  Did I not say so?” he cried.  “He is curled up in that hay, for the Satan’s grub he is!  That is where he is, see you!”

“Maybe,” another answered grudgingly, as they gathered before it.  “And maybe not, Simon!”

“To hell with your maybe not!” the first replied.  And he drove his pike deep into the hay and turned it viciously.

The two on the top controlled themselves.  Tignonville’s face was livid; of himself he would have slid down amongst them and taken his chance, preferring to die fighting, to die in the open, rather than to perish like a rat in a stack.  But La Tribe had gripped his arm and held him fast.