All three entered Mere Rebec’s establishment, and in less than a quarter of an hour the stout, limping hostess succeeded in serving them an omelet of respectable appearance with brown-bread and light wine.

Peasants do not eat quickly, and Petit-Pierre had such an enormous appetite that nearly an hour passed before Germain could think of renewing their journey.  Little Marie ate to oblige at first; then her appetite came, little by little; for at sixteen one cannot fast long, and the country air is an imperious master.  The kind words Germain said to her to comfort her and give her courage also produced their effect; she made an effort to persuade herself that seven months would soon be passed, and to think how happy she would be to be at home once more, in her own village, since Pere Maurice and Germain were agreed in promising to take her into their service.  But as she was beginning to brighten up and play with Petit-Pierre, Germain conceived the unfortunate idea of telling her to look out through the wine-shop window at the lovely view of the valley, which they could see throughout its whole length from that elevation, laughing and verdant and fertile.  Marie looked, and asked if they could see the houses at Belair from there.

“To be sure,” replied Germain, “and the farm, and your house too.  Look, that little gray speck, not far from the great poplar at Godard, just below the church-spire.”

“Ah!  I see it,” said the girl; and thereupon she began to weep again.

“I did wrong to remind you of that,” said Germain, “I keep doing foolish things to-day!  Come, Marie, my girl, let’s be off; the days are short, and when the moon comes up, an hour from now, it won’t be warm.”

They resumed their journey, and rode across the great heath, and as Germain did not urge the mare, in order not to fatigue the girl and the child by a too rapid gait, the sun had set when they left the road to enter the woods.

Germain knew the road as far as Magnier; but he thought that he could shorten it by not taking the avenue of Chanteloube, but going by Presles and La Sepulture, a route which he was not in the habit of taking when he went to the fair.  He went astray and lost a little more time before entering the woods; even then he did not enter at the right place, and failed to discover his mistake, so that he turned his back to Fourche and headed much farther up, in the direction of Ardentes.

He was prevented then from taking his bearings by a mist which came with the darkness, one of those autumn evening mists which the white moonlight makes more vague and more deceptive.  The great pools of water which abound in the clearings exhaled such dense vapor that when Grise passed through them, they only knew it by the splashing of her feet and the difficulty she had in pulling them out of the mud.