They advanced in the indicated direction, where they had the adventure with Pitou already described. Catherine had heard enough in the words about the doctor, the book, and the search-warrant, to save the innocent holder of the treasonable pamphlet.
Since the double errand of the police was fulfilled, the commander of the expedition was only too glad of the excuse to get far away. So he bounded on his men by his voice and example till they ran him into the woods. Then they came to a halt in the bushes. In the chase they were joined by two more policeman who had hidden on the farm with orders not to run up unless called.
"Faith, it is a good job the lad did not have the box instead of the book," said the organizer of the attack, "we would be obliged to take post-horses to catch up with him. Hang me if he is a man at all so much as a deer."
"But you have the prize, eh, Master Wolfstep?" said one of the subordinates.
"Certainly, comrade, for here it is," answered the police agent, to whom the nickname had been given for his sidelong "lope" or wolfish tread and its lightness.
"Then we are entitled to the promised reward, eh?"
"Ay, and here you are," said the captain of the squad, distributing gold pieces among them with no preference for those who had actively prosecuted the search and the others.
"Long live the Chief!" called out the men.
"There is no harm in your cheering the Chief," said Wolfstep: "but it is not he who cashes up this trip. It is some friend of his, lady or gentleman, who wants to keep in the background."
"I wager that he or she wants that little box bad," suggested one of the hirelings.
"Rigoulet, my friend," said the leader, "I have always certified that you are a chap full of keenness; but while we wait for the gift to win its reward, we had better be on the move. That confounded countryman does not look easily cooled down, and when he perceives the casket is missing, he may set his farm boys on our track; and they are poachers capable of keeling us over with a shot as surely as the best Swiss marksmen in his Majesty's forces."
This advice was that of the majority, for the five men kept on along the forest skirts out of sight till they reached the highroad.
This was no useless precaution for Catherine had no sooner seen the party disappear in pursuit of Pitou than, full of confidence in the last one's agility, who would lead them a pretty chase, she called on the farm-men to open the door.
They knew something unusual was going on but not exactly what.
They ran in to set her free and she liberated her father.
Billet seemed in a dream. Instead of rushing out of the room, he walked forth warily, and acted as if not liking to stay in any one place and yet hated to look on the furniture and cupboards disturbed by the posse.
"They have got the book, anyway?" he questioned.
"I believe they took that, dad, but not Pitou, who cut away? If they are sticking to him, they will all be over at Cayelles or Vauciennes by this time."
"Capital! Poor lad, he owes all this harrying to me."
"Oh, father, do not bother about him but look to ourselves. Be easy about Pitou getting out of his scrape. But what a state of disorder! look at this, mother!"
"They are low blackguards," said Mother Billet: "they have not even respected my linen press."
"What, tumbled over the linen?" said Billet, springing towards the cavity which the corporal had carefully closed but into which, opening it, he plunged both arms deeply. "It is not possible!"
"What are you looking for, father?" asked the girl as her father looked about him bewildered.
"Look, look if you can see it anywhere: the casket! that is what the villains were raking for."
"Dr. Gilbert's casket?" inquired Mrs. Billet, who commonly let others do the talking and work in critical times.
"Yes, that most precious casket," responded the farmer thrusting his hands into his mop of hair.
"You frighten me, father," said Catherine.
"Wretch that I am," cried the man, in rage, "and fool never to suspect that. I never thought about the casket. Oh, what will the doctor say? What will he think? That I am a betrayer, a coward, a worthless fellow!"
"Oh, heavens, what was in it, dad?"
"I don't know; but I answered for it to the doctor on my life and I ought to have been killed defending it."
He made so threatening a gesture against himself that the women recoiled in terror.
"My horse, bring me my horse," roared the madman. "I must let the doctor know – he must be apprised."
"I told Pitou to do that."
"Good! no, what's the use? – a man afoot. I must ride to Paris. Did you not read in his letter that he was going there? My horse!"
"And will you leave us in the midst of anguish?"
"I must, my girl, I must," he said, kissing Catherine convulsively: "the doctor said: 'If ever you lose that box, or rather if it is stolen from you, come to warn me the instant you perceive the loss, Billet, wherever I am. Let nothing stop you, not even the life of man.'"
"Lord, what can be in it?"
"I don't know a bit. But I do know that it was placed in my keeping, and that I have let it be snatched away. But here is my nag. I shall learn where the father is by his son at the college."
Kissing his wife and his daughter for the last time, the farmer bestrode his steed and set off towards the city at full gallop.
CHAPTER VI.
ON THE ROAD
Pitou was spurred by the two most powerful emotions in the world, love and fear. Panic bade him take care of himself as he would be arrested and perhaps flogged; love in Catherine's voice had said: "Be off to Paris."
These two stimulants led him to fly rather than run.
Heaven is infallible as well as mighty: how useful were the long legs of Pitou, so ungraceful at a ball, in streaking it over the country, as well as the knotty knees, although his heart, expanded by terror, beat three to a second. My Lord Charny, with his pretty feet and little knees, and symmetrically placed calves, could not have dashed along at this gait.
He had gone four leagues and a half in an hour, as much as is required of a good horse at the trot. He looked behind: nothing on the road; he looked forward; only a couple of women.
Encouraged, he threw himself on the turf by the roadside and reposed. The sweet smell of the lucerne and marjoram did not make him forget Mistress Billet's mild-cured bacon and the pound-and-a-half of bread which Catherine sliced off for him at every meal. All France lacked bread half as good as that, so dear that it originated the oft repeated saying of Duchess Polignac that "the poor hungry people ought to eat cake."
Pitou said that Catherine was the most generous creature in creation and the Billet Farm the most luxurious palace.
He turned a dying eye like the Israelites crossing the Jordan towards the east, where the Billet fleshpots smoked.
Sighing, but starting off anew, he went at a job-pace for a couple of hours which brought him towards Dammartin.
Suddenly his expert ear, reliable as a Sioux Indian's, caught the ring of a horseshoe on the road.
He had hardly concluded that the animal was coming at the gallop than he saw it appear on a hilltop four hundred paces off.
Fear which had for a space abandoned Pitou, seized him afresh, and restored him the use of those long if unshapely legs with which he had made such marvellous good time a couple of hours previously.
Without reflecting, looking behind or trying to hide his fright, Ange cleared the ditch on one side and darted through the woods to Ermenonville. He did not know the place but he spied some tall trees and reasoned that, if they were on the skirts