That which, at the risk of his life, he had come to fetch, was not in the desecrated church. It had to be sought for in the very place where most of the French soldiers had taken up their quarters for the night—the cottage of Pope Nikita. The door of the cottage was half open, and he saw that the floor was covered with sleeping forms clad in the blue tunic of the French infantry. What matter to him? Blotting out that sight, he saw the wistful, longing look in the dying eyes of the girl he loved, and, before him, the sacred picture her faltering accents had entreated him to bring to her. Thank God, there it hung yet—on the cottage wall, in the right-hand corner. Could he tread amongst those sleepers without awakening them, and reach it?
His step was noiseless as the footfall of the desert panther, and the French were weary with marching, and most of them heavy with vodka. He had grasped his prize—he stood with his hand on its frame, and a momentary throb of triumph in his sorrowful heart, when suddenly a head was raised; some one more wakeful than the rest had seen the intruder. In an instant the alarm was given, and the whole group were on their feet; in another, a dozen strong hands were laid at once upon Michael Ivanovitch.
He struggled desperately, but what could one man do against a dozen armed with swords and bayonets? He would have been cut down almost immediately, had not Seppel, very sensibly, called upon his men to spare his life and secure him as a prisoner. "He may serve for a guide, or at least give us some information," he said. Then he summoned the Pole to act as interpreter, taking the precaution to make another man—Féron it happened to be—stand before the prisoner with his loaded musket pointed at his breast. "He looks dangerous," he observed.
There was not much to be read in Michael's stolid, determined face, as the light of the early morning shone upon it.
