And then I became aware that it was precisely the unexpected that had happened.  There were people in the room above.  I heard footsteps and voices, and then felt no little alarm when another sound reached my ears—­a sound that I could not mistake.  It was the sound of muskets being stacked.

We looked at one another in mute dismay.  Had our pursuers hit upon our tracks at once?  It seemed scarcely credible.  Yet for a minute or two I waited in a kind of paralysis, expecting the trap door to open and a posse of armed soldiers to descend.  My anxiety on this score soon vanished, however, for I heard a heavy thump on the trap door above, and guessed that either something had been thrown upon it or that one of the intruders had unwittingly chosen it for his seat.  This, with the previous stacking of the arms, seeming to indicate that the visitors intended to make some stay, and had no suspicion of our presence.

I determined to set my fears finally at rest (and, I must own, also to satisfy my curiosity) by stealing out and taking a peep at them, if they had left the door open.  Whispering my comrades to remain perfectly silent, I slipped off my boots, quickly opened the door, and went very cautiously round to the front part of the house.

The first object that caught my eyes was a horse standing tethered in what had been the ruins of a barn adjoining the farmhouse.  Creeping up to the door, which had been left ajar, I peeped in, and saw a party of French soldiers seated on the floor, eating bread and sausages, and drinking from little tin cans.  My mouth watered at the sight of this food after more than twelve hours of fasting, but I was not conscious of this till afterwards.  The party consisted of seven men.  One, somewhat apart from the rest (it was he who had sat himself on the trap door), was clearly an officer.  He was a tall, lean man of some forty years; he had unbuttoned his coat and laid his hat, in which there was a white cockade, beside him.  At a respectful distance from him sat the others of the party.

For some time they ate their meal in silence, the men, I suppose, not daring to converse in the presence of their captain.  But by and by the officer, his hunger being some whit appeased, unbent a little from his dignity and addressed a stout little sergeant among the party.

“It is twelve years since I was here before, Jules,” he said, and there was a noticeable air of condescension in his tone; it was as though he did the sergeant a mighty favor in speaking at all.

“Yes, monsieur,” said the sergeant, as if humbly inviting him to continue.

“Yes, twelve years ago,” the officer repeated.  “I have reason, truly, to know it again.  Those were the days of the Conversions, Jules.  You don’t know what the Conversions were?  I will tell you.  There were cursed Huguenots in the country then, Jules, bad citizens, unruly rascals every one of them, and our good king commanded that they should instantly return to the true faith.  Some of them were obstinate, and they, see you, had to be converted.  We called it conversion by lodgings, and, my faith, it was excellent sport.  They quartered some of us on any household that was unwilling to obey the king, and there we remained until they saw the error of their ways.