ing the contrast between his muscular body and his placid, frank face.
Perhaps, real Samaritan that he was, Laurent would have preferred, to the passive and submissive soldier, deserters, the refractory, even the disgraced who were driven from the army and punished with the yellow badge.
In memory of the poignant enigma between Beveren and Calloo he harbored and concealed for a week, time enough to throw the gendarmes off the scent, and procure him enough money to leave the country, a deserter who had escaped punishment, an inoffensive and bewildered conscript who had been condemned, for a trifle, to stagnate in a fort in the marshes, and young and brave as he was, to endure the despotism of a disgraced officer. At the hour for fatigue duty he had upset his wheelbarrow, pitched away his mattock, and taken to flight under the eyes of the guard who aimed at him. He even told Laurent that he hoped less for freedom than for death. And as all the muskets discharged without touching him, he thought the clumsiness of the sentinels, his brother peasants, had been in the nature of mercy.
