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“Nothing, nothing! Not a crust! I tell you they cleaned me out!”

Maurice rushed in in affright, followed by Jean.

“Comrades, comrades–”

He knocked up the soldiers’ guns, and raising his eyes, said entreatingly:

“Come, be reasonable. Don’t you know me? It is I.”

“Who, I?”

“Maurice Levasseur, your nephew.”

Father Fouchard took up his candle. He recognized his nephew, beyond a doubt, but was firm in his resolve not to give so much as a glass of water.

“How can I tell whether you are my nephew or not in this infernal darkness? Clear out, everyone of you, or I will fire!”

And amid an uproar of execration, and threats to bring him down and burn the shanty, he still had nothing to say but: “Clear out, or I’ll fire!” which he repeated more than twenty times.

Suddenly a loud clear voice was heard rising above the din:

“But not on me, father?”

The others stood aside, and in the flickering light of the candle a man appeared, wearing the chevrons of a quartermaster-sergeant. It was Honore, whose battery was a short two hundred yards from there and who had been struggling for the last two hours against an irresistible longing to come and knock at that door. He had sworn never to set foot in that house again, and in all his four years of army life had not exchanged a single letter with that father whom he now addressed so curtly. The marauders had drawn apart and were conversing excitedly among themselves; what, the old man’s son, and a “non-com.”! it wouldn’t answer; better go and try their luck elsewhere! So they slunk away and vanished in the darkness.

When Fouchard saw that he had nothing more to fear he said in a matter-of-course way, as if he had seen his son only the day before:

“It’s you–All right, I’ll come down.”

His descent was a matter of time. He could be heard inside the house opening locked doors and carefully fastening them again, the maneuvers of a man determined to leave nothing at loose ends. At last the door was opened, but only for a few inches, and the strong grasp that held it would let it go no further.

“Come in, thou! and no one besides!”

He could not turn away his nephew, however, notwithstanding his manifest repugnance.

“Well, thou too!”

He shut the door flat in Jean’s face, in spite of Maurice’s entreaties. But he was obdurate. No, no! he wouldn’t have it; he had no use for strangers and robbers in his house, to smash and destroy his furniture! Finally Honore shoved their comrade inside the door by main strength and the old man had to make the best of it, grumbling and growling vindictively. He had carried his gun with him all this time. When at last he had ushered the three men into the common sitting-room and had stood his gun in a corner and placed the candle on the table, he sank into a mulish silence.

“Say, father, we are perishing with hunger. You will let us have a little bread and cheese, won’t you?”

He made a pretense of not hearing and did not answer, turning his head at every instant toward the window as if listening for some other band that might be coming to lay siege to his house.

“Uncle, Jean has been a brother to me; he deprived himself of food to give it to me. And we have seen such suffering together!”

He turned and looked about the room to assure himself that nothing was missing, not giving the three soldiers so much as a glance, and at last, still without a word spoken, appeared to come to a decision. He suddenly arose, took the candle and went out, leaving them in darkness and carefully closing and locking the door behind him in order that no one might follow him. They could hear his footsteps on the stairs that led to the cellar. There was another long period of waiting, and when he returned, again locking and bolting everything after him, he placed upon the table a big loaf of bread and a cheese, amid a silence which, once his anger had blown over, was merely the result of cautious cunning, for no one can ever tell what may come of too much talking. The three men threw themselves ravenously upon the food, and the only sound to be heard in the room was the fierce grinding of their jaws.