“I will promise more,” said I.  “At the smallest warning I am going to let off my piece.  You must not be annoyed if I fetch you back on a false alarm, or even an absurd one.  I shall sit here with my musket across my knees, and half a dozen others, all loaded, close around me:  and at the first sign of something wrong—­at the crackling of a twig, maybe—­I shall fire.  You, on your way to the creek, will keep your eyes just as wide open and fire at the first hint of danger.”

“I don’t like it,” my father persisted.

“But you see the wisdom of it,” said I.  “We must stay here:  that’s agreed.  So long as we stay here we shall be desperately uncomfortable, fearing we don’t know what:  that also is agreed.  Then, say I, for God’s sake let us clear this business up and get it over.”

My father nodded, stood up and shouldered his piece.  I knew that his eyes were on me, and avoided meeting them, afraid for a moment that he was going to say something in praise of my courage, whereas in truth I was horribly scared.  That last word or two had really expressed my terror.  I desired nothing but to get the whole thing over.  My hand shook so as I turned to load the first musket that I had twice to shorten my grasp of the ramrod before I could insert it in the barrel.

From the gateway leading to the lane my father watched till the loading was done.

“Good-bye and good luck, lad!” said he, and turned to go.  A pace or two beyond the gateway he halted as if to add a word, but thought better of it and resumed his stride.  His footsteps sounded hollow between the walls of the narrow lane.  Then he reached the turf of the meadow, and the sound ceased suddenly.

I wanted—­wanted desperately—­to break down and run after him.  By a bodily effort—­something like a long pull on a rope—­I held myself steady and braced my back against the bole of the ilex tree, which I had chosen because it gave a view through the gateway towards the forest.  Upon this opening and the glade beyond it I kept my eyes, for the first minute or two scarcely venturing to wink, only relaxing the strain now and again for a cautious glance to right and left around the deserted enclosure.  I could hear my heart working like a pump.

The enclosure—­indeed the whole valley—­lay deadly silent in the growing heat of the morning.  On the hidden summit behind the wood a raven croaked; and as the sun mounted, a pair of buzzards, winging their way to the mountains, crossed its glare and let fall a momentary trace of shadow that touched my nerves as with a whip.  But few birds haunt the Corsican bush, and to-day even these woods and this watered valley were dumb of song.  No breeze sent a shiver through the grey ilexes or the still paler olives in the orchard to my right.  On the slope the chestnut trees massed their foliage in heavy plumes of green, plume upon plume, wave upon wave, a still cascade of verdure held between jagged ridges of granite.  Here and there the granite pushed a bare pinnacle above the trees, and over these pinnacles the air swam and quivered.