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And an hour later, while pretending to be asleep, he saw Barlasch get up, and crawl cautiously into the trees where the unsavoury food had been thrown. "Provided," muttered Barlasch one day, "that you keep your health. I am an old man. I could not do this alone." Which was true, for D'Arragon was carrying all the baggage now. "We must both keep our health," answered Louis.
"Then I will begin to-night." "Begin what, my friend?" Barlasch waved aside all petty detail. "My preparations. I go out about ten o'clock after you are in. I will take the key of the front door, and let myself in when I come back. I shall make two journeys. Under the kitchen floor is a large hollow space. I fill that with bags of corn." "But where will you get the corn, my friend?"
He came into the room, and went past her towards the fire, where he put the logs together carefully. "It is that he is alive," said Desiree, "my husband." "No, it is not that," Barlasch corrected. He stood with his back to her, vaguely warming his hands. He had no learning, nor manners, nor any polish: nothing but those instincts of the heart that teach the head.
There was no guard-house here because Langfuhr was held by the French, and Rapp's outposts were three miles out on the road to Zoppot. "I have played this game for fifty years," said Barlasch, with a low laugh, when they reached the earthworks, completed, at such enormous cost of life and strength, by Rapp; "follow me and do as I do. When I stoop, stoop; when I crawl, crawl; when I run, run."
They waited, however, till they were grown up!" And with his ever-ready accusing finger he drew Desiree's attention to her own slimness. They were left alone for a minute while Lisa answered a knock at the door, during which time Barlasch sat in grim silence. "It is a letter," said Lisa, returning. "A sailor brought it." "Another?" said Barlasch, with a gesture of despair.
"I knew he would come back safely," said Desiree; and that was all. Sebastian read the letter in one quick glance and then fell to thinking. "It is time to quit Dantzig," said Barlasch quietly, as if he had divined the old man's thoughts. "I know Rapp. There will be trouble here, on the Vistula." But Sebastian dismissed the suggestion with a curt shake of the head.
The hostess came forward to tell Desiree that her room was ready, kindly suggesting that the "gnadiges Fraulein" must need sleep and rest. Desiree knew that Louis would go on to Konigsberg at once. She wondered whether she should ever see him again long afterwards, perhaps, when all this would seem like a dream. Barlasch, breathing noisily on his frost-bitten fingers, was watching them.
On finding Charles, they had sent Barlasch back in advance to announce the safety of Desiree's husband. Louis would, of course, not come to Dantzig. He would go north to Russia, to Reval, and perhaps home to England never to return. But it was not Barlasch.
It was ten o'clock before Sebastian came in. He nodded his thanks to Barlasch, and watched him bolt the door. He made no inquiry as to Mathilde, but extinguished the lamp, and went to his room. He never mentioned her name again. Early the next morning, the girls were astir. But Barlasch was before them, and when Desiree came down, she found the kitchen fire alight.
Others were quitting Dantzig by the same gate, on foot, in sleighs and carts; but all turned westward at the cross-roads and joined the stream of refugees hurrying forward to Germany. Barlasch and Desiree were alone on the wide road that runs southward across the plain towards Dirschau. The air was very cold and still.
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