Feverish with anxiety, he sat down on the low counter, with his hands
between his knees, and tried to think what to do. In the numb
hopelessness of the moment he became very quiet. His mind was confused,
but his senses were alert; he was in a kind of dream, yet he was acutely
conscious of the smell of new-made bread. It pervaded the air of the
place; it somehow crept into his brain and his being, so that, as long as
he might live, the smell of new-made bread would fetch back upon him the
nervous shiver and numbness of this hour of danger.

As he waited, he heard a noise outside, a clac-clac! clac-clac! which
seemed to be echoed back from the wood and stone of the houses in the
street, and then to be lifted up and carried away over the roofs and out
to sea---clac-clac! clac-clac! It was not the tap of a blind man's
staff--at first he thought it might be; it was not a donkey's foot on the
cobbles; it was not the broom-sticks of the witches of St. Clement's Bay,
for the rattle was below in the street, and the broom-stick rattle is
heard only on the roofs as the witches fly across country from Rocbert to
Bonne Nuit Bay.

This clac-clac came from the sabots of some nightfarer. Should he make a
noise and attract the attention of the passer-by? No, that would not do.
It might be some one who would wish to know whys and wherefores. He
must, of course, do his duty to his country, but he must save his father
too. Bad as the man was, he must save him, though, no matter what
happened, he must give the alarm. His reflections tortured him. Why had
he not stopped the nightfarer?

Even as these thoughts passed through the lad's mind, the clac-clac had
faded away into the murmur of the stream flowing by the Rue d'Egypte to