At the noise Hulot
made in jumping the hedge, the boy and his mother raised their heads.
Hulot mistook the young woman for an old one, naturally enough.
Wrinkles, coming long before their time, furrowed her face and neck;
she was clothed so grotesquely in a worn-out goatskin that if it had
not been for a dirty yellow petticoat, a distinctive mark of sex,
Hulot would hardly have known the gender she belonged to; for the
meshes of her long black hair were twisted up and hidden by a red
worsted cap. The tatters of the little boy did not cover him, but left
his skin exposed.
"Ho! old woman!" called Hulot, in a low voice, approaching her, "where
is the Gars?"
The twenty men who accompanied Hulot now jumped the hedge.
"Hey! if you want the Gars you'll have to go back the way you came,"
said the woman, with a suspicious glance at the troop.
"Did I ask you the road to Fougeres, old carcass?" said Hulot,
roughly. "By Saint-Anne of Auray, have you seen the Gars go by?"
"I don't know what you mean," replied the woman, bending over her hoe.
"You damned garce, do you want to have us eaten up by the Blues who
are after us?"
At these words the woman raised her head and gave another look of
distrust at the troop as she replied, "How can the Blues be after you?
I have just seen eight or ten of them who were going back to Fougeres
by the lower road.
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