When the man reached the edge of the forest next to the Chateau of
Beaulieu, he paused for a long time, standing in the shadow of the trees.
Always he looked fixedly at a single building, the log hut, in which
Alvarez held his four prisoners from Kaintock. While he stood there, stray
rays of moonlight coming through the cypresses fell upon him, revealing a
tanned face, yellow hair, and a tall, athletic form. He did not look like
a Spaniard or an Acadian, or one of the Frenchmen who had emigrated from
Canada, or any kind of a West Indian. His was certainly an alien presence
in those regions.
The moon slid back behind a cloud, the silver rays failed, and the figure
of the man became more indistinct, almost a shadow, thin and impalpable.
Then he bent far over in a stooping position, passed rapidly through a
patch of scrub bushes, and came much nearer to the log prison.
At the edge of the bushes he stopped again and watched the prison for at
least a minute. Two soldiers were on watch in front of it before the
single door, two soldiers in Spanish uniform, who were suffering from
tedium, and who were quite sure, anyway that unarmed prisoners could not
escape from a one-room building of logs with but a single door, secured by
a huge, oak shutter, and two windows, each too small to admit the passage
of a boy's or man's body.
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