“Mere-Grand, Mere-Grand!” cried Marie in dismay; “you frighten us by refusing to answer us, by looking over there as if some misfortune were coming up at a gallop!”
Then, prompted by the same anguish, the same cry suddenly came from Thomas, Francois and Antoine: “Father is in peril—father is going to die!”
What did they know? Nothing precise, certainly. Thomas no doubt had been astonished to see what a large quantity of the explosive his father had recently prepared, and both Francois and Antoine were aware of the ideas of revolt which he harboured in his mind. But, full of filial deference, they never sought to know anything beyond what he might choose to confide to them. They never questioned him; they bowed to whatever he might do.
And yet now a foreboding came to them, a conviction
