There was not a sound in the forest save the indistinct, fluttering sound of the snow
falling on the trees. It had been snowing since noon; a little fine snow, that covered the
branches as with frozen moss, and spread a silvery covering over the dead leaves in the
ditches, and covered the roads with a white, yielding carpet, and made still more intense
the boundless silence of this ocean of trees.
Before the door of the forester's dwelling a young woman, her arms bare to the elbow,
was chopping wood with a hatchet on a block of stone. She was tall, slender, strong-a
true girl of the woods, daughter and wife of a forester.
A voice called from within the house:
"We are alone to-night, Berthine; you must come in. It is getting dark, and there may be
Prussians or wolves about."
"I've just finished, mother," replied the young woman, splitting as she spoke an immense
log of wood with strong, deft blows, which expanded her chest each time she raised her
arms to strike. "Here I am; there's no need to be afraid; it's quite light still."
Then she gathered up her sticks and logs, piled them in the chimney corner, went back to
close the great oaken shutters, and finally came in, drawing behind her the heavy bolts of
the door.
Her mother, a wrinkled old woman whom age had rendered timid, was spinning by the
fireside.
"I am uneasy," she said, "when your father's not here. Two women are not much good."
"Oh," said the younger woman, "I'd cheerfully kill a wolf or a Prussian if it came to that."
And she glanced at a heavy revolver hanging above the hearth.
Her husband had been called upon to serve in the army at the beginning of the Prussian
invasion, and the two women had remained alone with the old father, a keeper named
Nicolas Pichon, sometimes called Long-legs, who refused obstinately to leave his home
and take refuge in the town.
This town was Rethel, an ancient stronghold built on a rock. Its inhabitants were
patriotic, and had made up their minds to resist the invaders, to fortify their native place,
and, if need be, to stand a siege as in the good old days. Twice already, under Henri IV
and under Louis XIV, the people of Rethel had distinguished themselves by their heroic
defence of their town. They would do as much now, by gad! or else be slaughtered within
their own walls.
