ground with his heavy carbine.

"Am I your leader?" he asked. Then after a pause he added, pointing to
the remains of Hulot's detachment, "If you had all fought as I did,
not one of those Blues would have escaped, and the coach could have
got here safely."

"They'd never have thought of escorting it or holding it back if we
had let them go by without a fight. No, you wanted to save your
precious skin and get out of their hands--He has bled us for the sake
of his own snout," continued the orator, "and made us lose twenty
thousand francs in good coin."

"Snout yourself!" cried Marche-a-Terre, retreating three steps and
aiming at his aggressor. "It isn't that you hate the Blues, but you
love the gold. Die without confession and be damned, for you haven't
taken the sacrament for a year."

This insult so incensed the Chouan that he turned pale and a low growl
came from his chest as he aimed in turn at Marche-a-Terre. The young
chief sprang between them and struck their weapons from their hands
with the barrel of his own carbine; then he demanded an explanation of
the dispute, for the conversation had been carried on in the Breton
dialect, an idiom with which he was not familiar.

"Monsieur le marquis," said Marche-a-Terre, as he ended his account of
the quarrel, "it is all the more unreasonable in them to find fault
with me because I have left Pille-Miche behind me; he'll know how to
save the coach for us."