this: 'We will talk by and by, monsieur; now I must take this child to
Fourche, and then I'll come back again.' And as soon as he'd gone out of
the sheepfold, my Marie says to me like this: 'Let's run away, my
Pierre, we must go away right off, for that man's a bad man, and he
would only hurt us.'--Then we went behind the barns and crossed a little
field and went to Fourche to look for you. But you weren't there, and
they wouldn't let us wait for you. And then _that man_ came up behind
us on his black horse, and we ran still farther away, and then we went
and hid in the woods. Then he came, too, and we hid when we heard him
coming. And then, when he'd gone by, we began to run for ourselves so as
to go home; and then at last you came and found us; and that's all there
was. I didn't forget anything, did I, my Marie?"

"No, Pierre, and it's the truth. Now, Germain, you will bear witness for
me and tell everybody at home that it wasn't for lack of courage and
being willing to work that I couldn't stay over yonder."

"And I will ask you, Marie," said Germain, "to ask yourself the
question, whether, when it comes to defending a woman and punishing a
knave, a man of twenty-eight isn't too old? I'd like to know if Bastien,
or any other pretty boy who has the advantage of being ten years younger
than I am, wouldn't have been crushed by _that man_, as Petit-Pierre
calls him: what do you think about it?"

"I think, Germain, that you have done me a very great service, and that
I shall thank you for it all my life."

"Is that all?"

"My little father," said the child, "I didn't think to tell little Marie