Presently she turned the corner and was gone again, and I had to repeat my manoeuvre. This time, surely, I should find a change. But no! Another green ride stretched away into the depths of the forest, with hedges of varying shades—here light and there dark, as hazel and elder, or thorn, and yew and box prevailed—but always high and stiff and impervious. Halfway down the ride Madame's figure tripped steadily on, the only moving thing in sight. I wondered, stood, and, when she vanished, followed-only to find that she had entered another track, a little narrower but in every other respect alike.

And so it went on for quite half an hour. Sometimes Madame turned to the right, sometimes to the left. The maze seemed to be endless. Once or twice I wondered whether she had lost her way, and was merely seeking to return. But her steady, purposeful gait, her measured pace, forbade the idea. I noticed, too, that she seldom looked behind her—rarely to right or left. Once the ride down which she passed was carpeted not with green, but with the silvery, sheeny leaves of some creeping plant that in the distance had a shimmer like that of water at evening. As she trod this, with her face to the low sun, her tall grey figure had a pure air that for the moment startled me—she looked unearthly. Then I swore in scorn of myself, and at the next corner I had my reward. She was no longer walking on. She had stopped, I found, and seated herself on a fallen tree that lay in the ride.

For some time I stood in ambush watching her, and with each minute I grew more impatient. At last I began to doubt—to have strange thoughts. The green walls were growing dark. The sun was sinking; a sharp, white peak, miles and miles away, which closed the vista of the ride, began to flush and colour rosily. Finally, but not before I had had leisure to grow uneasy, she stood up and walked on more slowly. I waited, as usual, until the next turning hid her. Then I hastened after her, and, warily passing round the corner came face to face with her!

I knew all in a moment saw all in a flash: that she had fooled me, tricked me, lured me away. Her face was white with scorn, her eyes blazed; her figure, as she confronted me, trembled with anger and infinite contempt.

'You spy!' she cried. 'You hound! You—gentleman! Oh, MON DIEU! if you are one of us—if you are really not of the CANAILLE—we shall pay for this some day! We shall pay a heavy reckoning in the time to come! I did not think,' she continued, and her every syllable was like the lash of a whip, 'that there was anything so vile as you in this world!'

I stammered something—I do not know what. Her words burned into me—into my heart! Had she been a man, I would have struck her dead!

'You thought that you deceived me yesterday,' she continued, lowering her tone, but with no lessening of the passion, the contempt, the indignation, which curled her lip and gave fullness to her voice. 'You plotter! You surface trickster! You thought it an easy task to delude a woman—you find yourself deluded. God give you shame that you may suffer!' she continued mercilessly. 'You talked of Clon, but Clon beside you is the most spotless, the most honourable of men!'

'Madame,' I said hoarsely—and I know that my face was grey as ashes—'let us understand one another.'

'God forbid!' she cried on the instant. 'I would not soil myself!'

'Fie! Madame,' I said, trembling. But then, you are a woman. That should cost a man his life!'

She laughed bitterly.

'You say well,' she retorted. 'I am not a man—and if you are one, thank God for it. Neither am I Madame. Madame de Cocheforet has spent this afternoon—thanks to your absence and your imbecility—with her husband. Yes, I hope that hurts you!' she went on, savagely snapping her little white teeth together. 'I hope that stings you; to spy and do vile work, and do it ill, Monsieur Mouchard—Monsieur de Mouchard, I should say—I congratulate you!'

'You are not Madame de Cocheforet?' I cried, stunned, even in the midst of my shame and rage, by this blow.

'No, Monsieur!' she answered grimly. 'I am not! I am not. And permit me to point out—for we do not all lie easily—that I never said I was. You deceived yourself so skilfully that we had no need to trick you.'

'Mademoiselle, then?' I muttered.

'Is Madame!' she cried. 'Yes, and I am Mademoiselle de Cocheforet. And in that character, and in all others, I beg from this moment to close our acquaintance, sir. When we meet again—if we ever do meet, which God forbid!' she went on, her eyes sparkling—'do not presume to speak to me, or I will have you flogged by the grooms. And do not stain our roof by sleeping under it again. You may lie to-night in the inn. It shall not be said that Cocheforet,' she continued proudly, 'returned even treachery with inhospitality; and I will give orders to that end. But to-morrow begone back to your master, like the whipped cur you are! Spy and coward!'

With those last words she moved away. I would have said something, I could almost have found it in my heart to stop her and make her hear. Nay, I had dreadful thoughts; for I was the stronger, and I might have done with her as I pleased. But she swept by me so fearlessly, as I might pass some loathsome cripple on the road, that I stood turned to stone. Without looking at me, without turning her head to see whether I followed or remained, or what I did, she went steadily down the track until the trees and the shadow and the growing darkness hid her grey figure from me; and I found myself alone.



CHAPTER V. REVENGE

And full of black rage! Had she only reproached me, or, turning on me in the hour of MY victory, said all that she had now said in the moment of her own, I could have borne it. She might have shamed me then, and I might have taken the shame to myself and forgiven her. But, as it was, I stood there in the gathering dusk, between the darkening hedges, baffled, tricked, defeated! And by a woman! She had pitted her wits against mine, her woman's will against my experience, and she had come off the victor. And then she had reviled me! As I took it all in, and began to comprehend also the more remote results, and how completely her move had made further progress on my part impossible, I hated her. She had tricked me with her gracious ways and her slow-coming smile. And, after all—for what she had said—it was this man's life or mine. 'What had I done that another man would not do? MON DIEU! in the future there was nothing I would not do. I would make her smart for those words of hers! I would bring her to her knees!

Still, hot as I was, an hour might have restored me to coolness. But when I started to return, I fell into a fresh rage, for I remembered that I did not know my way out of the maze of rides and paths into which she had drawn me; and this and the mishaps which followed, kept my rage hot. For a full hour I wandered in the wood, unable, though I knew where the village lay, to find any track which led continuously in one direction. Whenever, at the end of each attempt, the thicket brought me up short, I fancied that I heard her laughing on the farther side of the brake; and the ignominy of this chance punishment, and the check which the confinement placed on my rage, almost maddened me. In the darkness I fell, and rose cursing; I tore my hands with thorns; I stained my suit, which had suffered sadly once before. At length, when I had almost resigned myself to lie in the wood, I caught sight of the lights of the village, and, trembling between haste and anger, pressed towards them. In a few minutes I stood in the little street.

The lights of the inn shone only fifty yards away; but before I could show myself even there pride suggested that I should do something to repair my clothes. I stopped, and scraped and brushed them; and, at the same time, did what I could to compose my features. Then I advanced to the door and knocked. Almost on the instant the landlord's voice cried from the inside, 'Enter, Monsieur!'

I raised the latch and went in. The man was alone, squatting over the fire warming his hands. A black pot simmered on the ashes, As I entered he raised the lid and peeped inside. Then he glanced over his shoulder.

'You expected me?' I said defiantly, walking to the hearth, and setting one of my damp boots on the logs.

'Yes,' he answered, nodding curtly. 'Your supper is just ready. I thought that you would be in about this time.'

He grinned as he spoke, and it was with difficulty I suppressed my wrath.

'Mademoiselle de Cocheforet told you,' I said, affecting indifference, 'where I was?'

'Ay, Mademoiselle—or Madame,' he replied, grinning afresh.

So she had told him; where she had left me, and how she had tricked me! She had, made me the village laughing-stock! My rage flashed out afresh at the thought, and, at the sight of his mocking face, I raised my fist.

But he read the threat in my eyes, and was up in a moment, snarling, with his hand on his knife.

'Not again, Monsieur!' he cried, in his vile patois. 'My head is sore still raise your hand and I will rip you up as I would a pig!'

'Sit down, fool,' I said. 'I am not going to harm you. Where is your wife?'

'About her business.'

'Which should be getting my supper,' I retorted.

He rose sullenly, and, fetching a platter, poured the mess of broth and vegetables into it. Then he went to a cupboard and brought out a loaf of black bread and a measure of wine, and set them also on the table.

'You see it,' he said laconically.

'And a poor welcome!' I replied.

He flamed into sudden passion at that. Leaning with both his hands on the table he thrust his rugged face and blood-shot eyes close to mine. His moustachios bristled, his beard trembled.

'Hark ye, sirrah!' he muttered, with sullen emphasis, 'be content! I have my suspicions. And if it were not for my lady's orders I would put a knife into you, fair or foul, this very night. You would lie snug outside, instead of inside, and I do not think anyone would be the worse. But as it is, be content. Keep a still tongue; and when you turn your back on Cocheforet to-morrow keep it turned.'

'Tut! tut!' I said—but I confess that I was a little out of countenance. 'Threatened men live long, you rascal!'

'In Paris!' he answered significantly. 'Not here, Monsieur.'

He straightened himself with that, nodded once, and went back to the fire; and I shrugged my shoulders and began to eat, affecting to forget his presence. The logs on the hearth burned sullenly, and gave no light. The poor oil-lamp, casting weird shadows from wall to wall, served only to discover the darkness. The room, with its low roof and earthen floor, and foul clothes flung here and there, reeked of stale meals and garlic and vile cooking. I thought of the parlour at Cocheforet, and the dainty table, and the stillness, and the scented pot-herbs; and though I was too old a soldier to eat the worse because my spoon lacked washing, I felt the change, and laid it savagely at Mademoiselle's door.

The landlord, watching me stealthily from his place by the hearth, read my thoughts and chuckled aloud.

'Palace fare, palace manners!' he muttered scornfully. 'Set a beggar on horseback, and he will ride—back to the inn!'

'Keep a civil tongue, will you!' I answered, scowling at him.

'Have you finished?' he retorted.

I rose, without deigning to reply, and, going to the fire, drew off my boots, which were wet through. He, on the instant, swept off the wine and loaf to the cupboard, and then, coming back for the platter I had used, took it, opened the back door, and went out, leaving the door ajar. The draught which came in beat the flame of the lamp this way and that, and gave the dingy, gloomy room an air still more miserable. I rose angrily from the fire, and went to the door, intending to close it with a bang.

But when I reached it, I saw something, between door and jamb, which stayed my hand. The door led to a shed in which the housewife washed pots and the like. I felt some surprise, therefore, when I found a light there at this time of night; still more surprise when I saw what she was doing.

She was seated on the mud floor, with a rush-light before her, and on either side of her a high-piled heap of refuse and rubbish. From one of these, at the moment I caught sight of her, she was sorting things—horrible filthy sweepings of road or floor—to the other; shaking and sifting each article as she passed it across, and then taking up another and repeating the action with it, and so on—all minutely, warily, with an air of so much patience and persistence that I stood wondering. Some things—rags—she held up between her eyes and the light, some she passed through her fingers, some she fairly tore in pieces. And all the time her husband stood watching her greedily, my platter still in his hand, as if her strange occupation fascinated him.

I stood looking, also, for half a minute, perhaps; then the man's eye, raised for a single second to the door-way, met mine. He started, muttered something to his wife, and, quick as thought, he kicked the light out, leaving the shed in darkness. Cursing him for an ill-conditioned fellow, I walked back to the fire, laughing. In a twinkling he followed me, his face dark with rage. 'VENTRE-SAINT-GRIS!' he exclaimed, thrusting himself close to me. 'Is not a man's house his own?'

'It is, for me,' I answered coolly, shrugging my shoulders. 'And his wife: if she likes to pick dirty rags at this hour, that is your affair.'

'Pig of a spy!' he cried, foaming with rage.

I was angry enough at bottom, but I had nothing to gain by quarrelling with the fellow; and I curtly bade him remember himself.

'Your mistress gave you orders,' I said contemptuously. 'Obey them.'

He spat on the floor, but at the same time he grew calmer.

'You are right there,' he answered spitefully. 'What matter, after all, since you leave to-morrow at six? Your horse has been sent down, and your baggage is above.'

'I will go to it,' I retorted. 'I want none of your company. Give me a light, fellow!'

He obeyed reluctantly, and, glad to turn my back on him, I went up the ladder, still wondering faintly, in the midst of my annoyance, what his wife was about that my chance detection of her had so enraged him. Even now he was not quite himself. He followed me with abuse, and, deprived by my departure of any other means of showing his spite, fell to shouting through the floor, bidding me remember six o'clock, and be stirring; with other taunts, which did not cease until he had tired himself out.

The sight of my belongings—which I had left a few hours before at the Chateau—strewn about the floor of this garret, went some way towards firing me again. But I was worn out. The indignities and mishaps of the evening had, for once, crushed my spirit, and after swearing an oath or two I began to pack my bags. Vengeance I would have; but the time and manner I left for daylight thought. Beyond six o'clock in the morning I did not look forward; and if I longed for anything it was for a little of the good Armagnac I had wasted on those louts of merchants in the kitchen below. It might have done me good now.

I had wearily strapped up one bag, and nearly filled the other, when I came upon something which did, for the moment, rouse the devil in me. This was the tiny orange-coloured sachet which Mademoiselle had dropped the night I first saw her at the inn, and which, it will be remembered, I picked up. Since that night I had not seen it, and had as good as forgotten it. Now, as I folded up my other doublet, the one I had then been wearing, it dropped from my pocket.

The sight of it recalled all—that night, and Mademoiselle's face in the lantern light, and my fine plans, and the end of them; and, in a fit of childish fury, the outcome of long suppressed passion, I snatched up the sachet from the floor and tore it across and across, and flung the pieces down. As they fell, a cloud of fine pungent dust burst from them, and with the dust, something more solid, which tinkled sharply on the boards, as it fell. I looked down to see what this was—perhaps I already repented of my act; but for a moment I could see nothing. The floor was grimy and uninviting, the light bad.

In certain moods, however, a man is obstinate about small things, and I moved the taper nearer. As I did so a point of light, a flashing sparkle that shone for a second among the dirt and refuse on the floor, caught my eye. It was gone in a moment, but I had seen it. I stared, and moved the light again, and the spark flashed out afresh, this time in a different place. Much puzzled, I knelt, and, in a twinkling, found a tiny crystal. Hard by it lay another—and another; each as large as a fair-sized pea. I took up the three, and rose to my feet again, the light in one hand, the crystals in the palm of the other.

They were diamonds! Diamonds of price! I knew it in a moment. As I moved the taper to and fro above them, and watched the fire glow and tremble in their depths, I knew that I held in my hand that which would buy the crazy inn and all its contents a dozen times over! They were diamonds! Gems so fine, and of so rare a water—or I had never seen gems—that my hand trembled as I held them, and my head grew hot and my heart beat furiously. For a moment I thought that I dreamed, that my fancy played me some trick; and I closed my eyes and did not open them again for a minute. But when I did, there they were, hard, real, and angular. Convinced at last, in a maze of joy and fear, I closed my hand upon them, and, stealing on tip-toe to the trap-door, laid first my saddle on it and then my bags, and over all my cloak, breathing fast the while.

Then I stole back, and, taking up the light again, began to search the floor, patiently, inch by inch, with naked feet, every sound making me tremble as I crept hither and thither over the creaking boards. And never was search more successful or better paid. In the fragments of the sachet I found six smaller diamonds and a pair of rubies. Eight large diamonds I found on the floor. One, the largest and last found, had bounded away, and lay against the wall in the farthest corner. It took me an hour to run that one to earth; but afterwards I spent another hour on my hands and knees before I gave up the search, and, satisfied at last that I had collected all, sat down on my saddle on the trap-door, and, by the last flickering light of a candle which I had taken from my bag, gloated over my treasure—a treasure worthy of fabled Golconda.

Hardly could I believe in its reality, even now. Recalling the jewels which the English Duke of Buckingham wore on the occasion of his visit to Paris in 1625, and whereof there was so much talk, I took these to be as fine, though less in number. They should be worth fifteen thousand crowns, more or less. Fifteen thousand crowns! And I held them in the hollow of my hand—I, who was scarcely worth ten thousand sous.

The candle going out cut short my admiration. Left in the dark with these precious atoms, my first thought was how I might dispose of them safely; which I did, for the time, by secreting them in the lining of my boot. My second thought turned on the question how they had come where I had found them, among the powdered spice and perfumes in Mademoiselle de Cocheforet's sachet.

A minute's reflection enabled me to come very near the secret, and at the same time shed a flood of light on several dark places, What Clon had been seeking on the path between the house and the village, what the goodwife of the inn had sought among the sweepings of yard and floor, I knew now the sachet—knew, too, what had caused the marked and sudden anxiety I had noticed at the Chateau—the loss of this sachet.

And there for a while I came to a check But one step more up the ladder of thought brought all in view. In a flash I guessed how the jewels had come to be in the sachet; and that it was not Mademoiselle but M. de Cocheforet who had mislaid them. I thought this last discovery so important that I began to pace the room softly, unable, in my excitement, to remain still.

Doubtless he had dropped the jewels in the hurry of his start from the inn that night! Doubtless, too, he had carried them in that bizarre hiding-place for the sake of safety, considering it unlikely that robbers, if he fell into their hands, would take the sachet from him; as still less likely that they would suspect it to contain anything of value. Everywhere it would pass for a love-gift, the work of his mistress.

Nor did my penetration stop there. I guessed that the gems were family property, the last treasure of the house; and that M. de Cocheforet, when I saw him at the inn, was on his way to convey them out of the country; either to secure them from seizure by the Government, or to raise money by selling them—money to be spent in some last desperate enterprise. For a day or two, perhaps, after leaving Cocheforet, while the mountain road and its chances occupied his thoughts, he had not discovered his loss. Then he had searched for the precious sachet, missed it, and returned hot-foot on his tracks.

The longer I considered the circumstances the more certain I was that I had hit on the true solution; and all that night I sat wakeful in the darkness, pondering what I should do. The stones, unset as they were, could never be identified, never be claimed. The channel by which they had come to my hands could never be traced. To all intents they were mine; mine, to do with as I pleased! Fifteen thousand crowns, perhaps twenty thousand crowns, and I to leave at six in the morning, whether I would or no! I might leave for Spain with the jewels in my pocket. Why not?

I confess I was tempted. And indeed the gems were so fine that I doubt not some indifferently honest men would have sold salvation for them. But—a Berault his honour? No. I was tempted, I say; but not for long. Thank God, a man may be reduced to living by the fortunes of the dice, and may even be called by a woman 'spy' and 'coward,' without becoming a thief! The temptation soon left me—I take credit for it—and I fell to thinking of this and that plan for making use of them. Once it occurred to me to take the jewels to the Cardinal and buy my pardon with them; again, to use them as a trap to capture Cocheforet; again, to—and then, about five in the morning, as I sat up on my wretched pallet, while the first light stole slowly in through the cobwebbed, hay-stuffed lattice, there came to me the real plan, the plan of plans, on which I acted.

It charmed me I smacked my lips over it, and hugged myself, and felt my eyes dilate in the darkness, as I conned it. It seemed cruel, it seemed mean; I cared nothing. Mademoiselle had boasted of her victory over me, of her woman's wits and her acuteness and of my dullness. She had said that her grooms should flog me. She had rated me as if I had been a dog. Very well; we would see now whose brains were the better, whose was the master mind, whose should be the whipping.

The one thing required by my plan was that I should get speech with her; that done, I could trust myself and my new-found weapon for the rest. But that was absolutely necessary, and, seeing that there might be some difficulty about it, I determined to descend as if my mind were made up to go; then, on pretence of saddling my horse, I would slip away on foot, and lie in wait near the Chateau until I saw her come out. Or if I could not effect my purpose in that way—either by reason of the landlord's vigilance, or for any other cause—my course was still easy. I would ride away, and when I had proceeded a mile or so, tie up my horse in the forest and return to the wooden bridge. Thence I could watch the garden and front of the Chateau until time and chance gave me the opportunity I sought.

So I saw my way quite clearly; and when the fellow below called me, reminding me rudely that I must be going, and that it was six o'clock, I was ready with my answer. I shouted sulkily that I was coming, and, after a decent delay, I took up my saddle and bags and went down.

Viewed by the light of a cold morning, the inn-room looked more smoky, more grimy, more wretched than when I had last seen it. The goodwife was not visible. The fire was not lighted. No provision, not so much as a stirrup-cup or bowl of porridge cheered the heart.

I looked round, sniffing the stale smell of last night's lamp, and grunted.

'Are you going to send me out fasting?' I said, affecting a worse humour than I felt.

The landlord was standing by the window, stooping over a great pair of frayed and furrowed thigh-boots which he was labouring to soften with copious grease.

'Mademoiselle ordered no breakfast,' he answered, with a malicious grin.

'Well it does not much matter,' I replied grandly. 'I shall be at Auch by noon.'

'That is as may be,' he answered with another grin.

I did not understand him, but I had something else to think about, and I opened the door and stepped out, intending to go to the stable. Then in a second I comprehended. The cold air laden with woodland moisture met me and went to my bones; but it was not that which made me shiver. Outside the door, in the road, sitting on horseback in silence, were two men. One was Clon. The other, who had a spare horse by the rein—my horse—was a man I had seen at the inn, a rough, shock-headed, hard-bitten fellow. Both were armed, and Clon was booted. His mate rode barefoot, with a rusty spur strapped to one heel.

The moment I saw them a sure and certain fear crept into my mind: it was that which made me shiver. But I did not speak to them. I went in again and closed the door behind me. The landlord was putting on his boots.

'What does this mean?' I said hoarsely—though I had a clear prescience of what was coming. 'Why are these men here?'

'Orders,' he answered laconically.

'Whose orders?' I retorted.

'Whose?' he answered bluntly. 'Well, Monsieur, that is my business. Enough that we mean to see you out of the country, and out of harm's way.'

'But if I will not go?' I cried.

'Monsieur will go,' he answered coolly. 'There are no strangers in the village to-day,' he added, with a significant smile.

'Do you mean to kidnap me?' I replied, in a rage.

But behind the rage was something else—I will not call it terror, for the brave feel no terror but it was near akin to it. I had had to do with rough men all my life, but there was a grimness and truculence in the aspect of these three that shook me. When I thought of the dark paths and narrow lanes and cliff sides we must traverse, whichever road we took, I trembled.

'Kidnap you, Monsieur?' he answered, with an every-day air. 'That is as you please to call it. One thing is certain, however,' he continued, maliciously touching an arquebuss which he had brought out, and set upright against a chair while I was at the door; if you attempt the slightest resistance, we shall know how to put an end to it, either here or on the road.'

I drew a deep breath, the very imminence of the danger restoring me to the use of my faculties. I changed my tone and laughed aloud.

'So that is your plan, is it?' I said. 'The sooner we start the better, then. And the sooner I see Auch and your back turned, the more I shall be pleased.'

He rose. 'After you, Monsieur,' he said.

I could not restrain a slight shiver. His new-born politeness alarmed me more than his threats. I knew the man and his ways, and I was sure that it boded ill to me.

But I had no pistols, and only my sword and knife, and I knew that resistance at this point must be worse than vain. I went out jauntily, therefore, the landlord coming after me with my saddle and bags.

The street was empty, save for the two waiting horsemen who sat in their saddles looking doggedly before them, The sun had not yet risen, the air was raw. The sky was grey, cloudy, and cold. My thoughts flew back to the morning on which I had found the sachet—at that very spot, almost at that very hour, and for a moment I grew warm again at the thought of the little packet I carried in my boot. But the landlord's dry manner, the sullen silence of his two companions, whose eyes steadily refused to meet mine, chilled me again. For an instant the impulse to refuse to mount, to refuse to go, was almost irresistible; then, knowing the madness of such a course, which might, and probably would, give the men the chance they desired, I crushed it down and went slowly to my stirrup.

'I wonder you do not want my sword,' I said by way of sarcasm, as I swung myself up.

'We are not afraid of it,' the innkeeper answered gravely. 'You may keep it—for the present.'

I made no answer—what answer had I to make?—and we rode at a footpace down the street; he and I leading, Clon and the shock-headed man bringing up the rear. The leisurely mode of our departure, the absence of hurry or even haste, the men's indifference whether they were seen, or what was thought, all served to sink my spirits and deepen my sense of peril. I felt that they suspected me, that they more than half guessed the nature of my errand at Cocheforet, and that they were not minded to be bound by Mademoiselle's orders. In particular, I augured the worst from Clon's appearance. His lean malevolent face and sunken eyes, his very dumbness chilled me. Mercy had no place there.

We rode soberly, so that nearly half an hour elapsed before we gained the brow from which I had taken my first look at Cocheforet. Among the dwarf oaks whence I had viewed the valley we paused to breathe our horses, and the strange feelings with which I looked back on the scene may be imagined. But I had short time for indulging in sentiment or recollections. A curt word, and we were moving again.

A quarter of a mile farther on, the road to Auch dipped into the valley. When we were already half way down this descent the innkeeper suddenly stretched out his hand and caught my rein.

'This way!' he said.

I saw that he would have me turn into a by-path leading south-westwards—a mere track, faint and little trodden and encroached on by trees, which led I knew not whither. I checked my horse.

'Why?' I said rebelliously. 'Do you think I do not know the road? The road we are in is the way to Auch.'

'To Auch—yes,' he answered bluntly. 'But we are not going to Auch,'

'Whither then?' I said angrily.

'You will see presently,' he replied with an ugly smile.

'Yes, but I will know now!' I retorted, passion getting the better of me. 'I have come so far with you. You will find it more easy to take me farther if you tell me your plans.'

'You are a fool!' he cried with a snarl.

'Not so,' I answered. 'I ask only to know whither I am going.'

'Into Spain,' he said. 'Will that satisfy you?'

'And what will you do with me there?' I asked, my heart giving a great bound.

'Hand you over to some friends of ours,' he answered curtly, 'if you behave yourself. If not, there is a shorter way, and one that will save us some travelling. Make up your mind, Monsieur. Which shall it be?'



CHAPTER VI. So that was their plan. Two or three hours to the southward, the long, white, glittering wall stretched east and west above the brown woods. Beyond that lay Spain. Once across the border, I might be detained, if no worse happened to me, as a prisoner of war; for we were then at war with Spain on the Italian side. Or I might be handed over to one of the savage bands, half smugglers, half brigands, that held the passes; or be delivered, worse fate of all, into the power of the French exiles, of whom some would be likely to recognise me and cut my throat.

'It is a long way into Spain,' I muttered, watching in a kind of fascination Clon handling his pistols.

'I think you will find the other road longer still,' the landlord answered grimly. 'But choose, and be quick about it.'

They were three to one, and they had firearms. In effect I had no choice.

'Well, if I must I must?' I cried, making up my mind with seeming recklessness. 'VOGUE LA GALERE! Spain be it. It will not be the first time I have heard the dons talk.'

The men nodded, as much as to say that they had known what the end would be; the landlord released my rein; and in a trice we were riding down the narrow track, with our faces set towards the mountains.

On one point my mind was now more easy. The men meant fairly by me, and I had no longer to fear, as I had feared, a pistol-shot in the back at the first convenient ravine. As far as that went, I might ride in peace. On the other hand, if I let them carry me across the border my fate was sealed. A man set down without credentials or guards among the wild desperadoes who swarmed in war-time in the Asturian passes might consider himself fortunate if an easy death fell to his lot. In my case I could make a shrewd guess what would happen. A single nod of meaning, one muttered word, dropped among the savage men with whom I should be left, and the diamonds hidden in my boot would go neither to the Cardinal nor back to Mademoiselle—nor would it matter to me whither they went.

So while the others talked in their taciturn fashion, or sometimes grinned at my gloomy face, I looked out over the brown woods with eyes that saw yet did not see. The red squirrel swarming up the trunk, the startled pigs that rushed away grunting from their feast of mast, the solitary rider who met us, armed to the teeth, and passed northwards after whispering with the landlord—all these I saw. But my mind was not with them. It was groping and feeling about like a hunted mole for some way of escape. For time pressed. The slope we were on was growing steeper. By-and-by we fell into a southward valley, and began to follow it steadily upwards, crossing and recrossing a swiftly rushing stream. The snow peaks began to be hidden behind the rising bulk of hills that overhung us, and sometimes we could see nothing before or behind but the wooded walls of our valley rising sheer and green a thousand paces high on either hand; with grey rocks half masked by fern and ivy jutting here and there through the firs and alders.

It was a wild and sombre scene even at that hour, with the mid-day sun shining on the rushing water and drawing the scent out of the pines; but I knew that there was worse to come, and sought desperately for some ruse by which I might at least separate the men. Three were too many; with one I might deal. At last, when I had cudgelled my brain for an hour, and almost resigned myself to a sudden charge on the men single-handed—a last desperate resort—I thought of a plan: dangerous, too, and almost desperate, but which still seemed to promise something. It came of my fingers resting, as they lay in my pocket, on the fragments of the orange sachet; which, without having any particular design in my mind, I had taken care to bring with me. I had torn the sachet into four pieces—four corners. As I played mechanically with them, one of my fingers fitted into one, as into a glove; a second finger into another. And the plan came.

Before I could move in it, however, I had to wait until we stopped to bait the flagging horses, which we did about noon at the head of the valley. Then, pretending to drink from the stream, I managed to secure unseen a handful of pebbles, slipping them into the same pocket with the morsels of stuff. On getting to horse again, I carefully fitted a pebble, not too tightly, into the largest scrap, and made ready for the attempt.

The landlord rode on my left, abreast of me; the other two knaves behind. The road at this stage favoured me, for the valley, which drained the bare uplands that lay between the lower hills and the base of the real mountains, had become wide and shallow. Here were no trees, and the path was a mere sheep-track covered with short, crisp grass, and running sometimes on this bank of the stream and sometimes on that.

I waited until the ruffian beside me turned to speak to the men behind. The moment he did so, and his eyes were averted, I slipped out the scrap of satin in which I had placed the pebble, and balancing it carefully on my right thigh as I rode, I flipped it forward with all the strength of my thumb and finger. I meant it to fall a few paces before us in the path, where it could be seen. But alas for my hopes! At the critical moment my horse started, my finger struck the scrap aslant, the pebble flew out, and the bit of stuff fluttered into a whin-bush close to my stirrup—and was lost!

I was bitterly disappointed, for the same thing might happen again, and I had now only three scraps left. But fortune favoured me, by putting it into my neighbour's head to plunge into a hot debate with the shock-headed man on the nature of some animals seen on a distant brow; which he said were izards, while the other maintained that they were common goats. He continued, on this account, to ride with his face turned from me, and I had time to fit another pebble into the second piece of stuff. Sliding it on to my thigh, I poised it, and flipped it.

This time my finger struck the tiny missile fairly in the middle, and shot it so far and so truly that it dropped exactly in the path ten paces in front of us. The moment I saw it fall I kicked my neighbour's nag in the ribs; it started, and he, turning in a rage, hit it. The next instant he pulled it almost on to its haunches.

'SAINT GRIS!' he cried; and sat glaring at the bit of yellow satin, with his face turned purple and his jaw fallen.

'What is it!' I said, staring at him in turn, 'What is the matter, fool?'

'Matter?' he blurted out. 'MON DIEU!'

But Clon's excitement surpassed even his. The dumb man no sooner saw what had attracted his comrade's attention, than he uttered an inarticulate and horrible noise, and tumbling off his horse, more like a beast than a man threw himself bodily on the precious morsel.

The innkeeper was not far behind him. An instant and he was down, too, peering at the thing; and for an instant I thought that they would fight over it. However, though their jealousy was evident, their excitement cooled a little when they discovered that the scrap of stuff was empty; for, fortunately, the pebble had fallen out of it. Still, it threw them into such a fever of eagerness as it was wonderful to witness. They nosed the ground where it had lain, they plucked up the grass and turf, and passed it through their fingers, they ran to and fro like dogs on a trail; and, glancing askance at one another, came back always together to the point of departure. Neither in his jealousy would suffer the other to be there alone.

The shock-headed man and I sat our horses and looked on; he marvelling, and I pretending to marvel. As the two searched up and down the path, we moved a little out of it to give them space; and presently, when all their heads were turned from me, I let a second morsel drop under a gorse-bush. The shock-headed man, by-and-by, found this, and gave it to Clon; and as from the circumstances of the first discovery no suspicion attached to me, I ventured to find the third and last scrap myself. I did not pick it up, but I called the innkeeper, and he pounced upon it as I have seen a hawk pounce on a chicken.

They hunted for the fourth morsel, but, of course, in vain, and in the end they desisted, and fitted the three they had together; but neither would let his own portion out of his hands, and each looked at the other across the spoil with eyes of suspicion. It was strange to see them in that wide-stretching valley, whence grey boar-backs of hills swelled up into the silence of the snow—it was strange, I say, in that vast solitude, to see these two, mere dots on its bosom, circling round one another in fierce forgetfulness of the outside world, glaring and shifting their ground like cocks about to engage, and wholly engrossed—by three scraps of orange-colour, invisible at fifty paces!

At last the innkeeper cried with an oath, 'I am going back. This must be known down yonder. Give me your pieces, man, and do you go on with Antoine. It will be all right.'

But Clon, waving a scrap of the stuff in either hand, and thrusting his ghastly mask into the other's face, shook his head in passionate denial. He could not speak, but he made it as clear as daylight that if anyone went back with the news, he was the man to go.

'Nonsense!' the landlord rejoined fiercely, 'We cannot leave Antoine to go on alone with him. Give me the stuff.'

But Clon would not. He had no thought of resigning the credit of the discovery; and I began to think that the two would really come to blows. But there was an alternative—an alternative in which I was concerned; and first one and then the other looked at me. It was a moment of peril, and I knew it. My stratagem might react on myself, and the two, to put an end to their difficulty, agree to put an end to me. But I faced them so coolly, and showed so bold a front, and the ground where we stood was so open, that the idea took no root. They fell to wrangling again more viciously than before. One tapped his gun and the other his pistols. The landlord scolded, the dumb man gurgled. At last their difference ended as I had hoped it would.

'Very well then, we will both go back!' the innkeeper cried in a rage. 'And Antoine must see him on. But the blame be on your head. Do you give the lad your pistols.'

Clon took one pistol, and gave it to the shock-headed man.

'The other!' the innkeeper said impatiently.

But Clon shook his head with a grim smile, and pointed to the arquebuss.

By a sudden movement, the landlord snatched the pistol, and averted Clon's vengeance by placing both it and the gun in the shock-headed man's hands.

'There!' he said, addressing the latter, 'now can you do? If Monsieur tries to escape or turn back, shoot him! But four hours' riding should bring you to the Roca Blanca. You will find the men there, and will have no more to do with it.'

Antoine did not see things quite in that light, however. He looked at me, and then at the wild track in front of us; and he muttered an oath and said he would die if he would.

But the landlord, who was in a frenzy of impatience, drew him aside and talked to him, and in the end seemed to persuade him; for in a few minutes the matter was settled.

Antoine came back, and said sullenly, 'Forward, Monsieur,' the two others stood on one side, I shrugged my shoulders and kicked up my horse, and in a twinkling we two were riding on together—man to man. I turned once or twice to see what those we had left behind were doing, and always found them standing in apparent debate; but my guard showed so much jealousy of these movements that I presently shrugged my shoulders again and desisted.

I had racked my brains to bring about this state of things. Strange to say, now I had succeeded, I found it less satisfactory than I had hoped. I had reduced the odds and got rid of my most dangerous antagonists; but Antoine, left to himself, proved to be as full of suspicion as an egg of meat. He rode a little behind me, with his gun across his saddlebow, and a pistol near his hand; and at the slightest pause on my part, or if I turned to look at him, he muttered his constant 'Forward, Monsieur!' in a tone which warned me that his finger was on the trigger. At such a distance he could not miss; and I saw nothing for it but to go on meekly before him to the Roca Blanca—and my fate.

What was to be done? The road presently reached the end of the valley and entered a narrow pine-clad defile, strewn with rocks and boulders, over which the torrent plunged and eddied with a deafening roar. In front the white gleam of waterfalls broke the sombre ranks of climbing trunks. The snow line lay less than half a mile away on either hand; and crowning all—at the end of the pass, as it seemed to the eye—rose the pure white pillar of the Pic du Midi shooting up six thousand feet into the blue of heaven. Such a scene so suddenly disclosed, was enough to drive the sense of danger from my mind; and for a moment I reined in my horse. But 'Forward, Monsieur!' came the grating order. I fell to earth again, and went on. What was to be done?

I was at my wits' end to know. The man refused to talk, refused to ride abreast of me, would have no dismounting, no halting, no communication at all. He would have nothing but this silent, lonely procession of two, with the muzzle of his gun at my back. And meanwhile we were fast climbing the pass. We had left the others an hour—nearly two. The sun was declining; the time, I supposed, about half-past three.

If he would only let me come within reach of him! Or if anything would fall out to take his attention! When the pass presently widened into a bare and dreary valley, strewn with huge boulders and with snow lying here and there in the hollows, I looked desperately before me, and scanned even the vast snow-fields that overhung us and stretched away to the base of the ice-peak. But I saw nothing. No bear swung across the path, no izard showed itself on the cliffs. The keen, sharp air cut our cheeks and warned me that we were approaching the summit of the ridge. On all sides were silence and desolation.

MON DIEU! And the ruffians on whose tender mercies I was to be thrown might come to meet us! They might appear at any moment. In my despair I loosened my hat on my head, and let the first gust carry it to the ground, and then with an oath of annoyance tossed my feet from the stirrups to go after it. But the rascal roared to me to keep my seat.

'Forward, Monsieur!' he shouted brutally. 'Go on!'

'But my hat!' I cried. 'MILLE TONNERRES, man! I must—'

'Forward, Monsieur, or I shoot!' he replied inexorably raising his gun. 'One—two—'

And I went on. But, ah, I was wrathful! That I, Gil de Berault, should be outwitted, and led by the nose like a ringed bull, by this Gascon lout! That I, whom all Paris knew and feared—if it did not love—the terror of Zaton's, should come to my end in this dismal waste of snow and rock, done to death by some pitiful smuggler or thief! It must not be. Surely in the last resort I could give an account of one man, though his belt were stuffed with pistols.

But how? Only, it seemed, by open force. My heart began to flutter as I planned it; and then grew steady again. A hundred paces before us a gully or ravine on the left ran up into the snow-field. Opposite its mouth a jumble of stones and broken rocks covered the path, I marked this for the place. The knave would need both his hands to hold up his nag over the stones, and, if I turned on him suddenly enough, he might either drop his gun or fire it harmlessly.

But, in the meantime, something happened; as, at the last moment, things do happen. While we were still fifty yards short of the place, I found his horse's nose creeping forward on a level with my crupper; and, still advancing, still advancing, until I could see it out of the tail of my eye, and my heart gave a great bound. He was coming abreast of me: he was going to deliver himself into my hands! To cover my excitement, I began to whistle.

'Hush!' he muttered fiercely, his voice sounding so strange and unnatural, that my first thought was that he was ill; and I turned to him. But he only said again,—

'Hush! Pass by here quietly, Monsieur.'

'Why?' I asked mutinously, curiosity getting the better of me. For had I been wise I had taken no notice; every second his horse was coming up with mine. Its nose was level with my stirrup already.

'Hush, man!' he said again. This time there was no mistake about the panic in his voice. 'They call this the Devil's Chapel, God send us safe by it! It is late to be here. Look at those!' he continued, pointing with a finger which visibly shook.

I looked. At the mouth of the gully, in a small space partly cleared of stones, stood three broken shafts, raised on rude pedestals.

'Well?' I said in a low voice. The sun, which was near setting, flushed the great peak above to the colour of blood; but the valley was growing grey and each moment more dreary. 'Well, what of those?' I said.

In spite of my peril and the excitement of the coming struggle I felt the chill of his fear. Never had I seen so grim, so desolate, so God-forsaken a place! Involuntarily I shivered.

'They were crosses,' he muttered in a voice little above a whisper, while his eyes roved this way and that in terror. 'The Cure of Gabas blessed the place, and set them up. But next morning they were as you see them now. Come on, Monsieur; come on!' he continued, plucking at my arm. 'It is not safe here after sunset. Pray God, Satan be not at home!'

He had completely forgotten in his panic that he had anything to fear from me. His gun dropped loosely across his saddle, his leg rubbed mine. I saw this, and I changed my plan of action. As our horses reached the stones I stooped, as if to encourage mine, and, with a sudden clutch, snatched the gun bodily from his hand, at the same time that I backed my horse with all my strength. It was done in a moment! A second and I had him at the end of the gun, and my finger was on the trigger. Never was victory more easily gained.

He looked at me between rage and terror, his jaw fallen.

'Are you mad?' he cried, his teeth chattering as he spoke. Even in this strait his eyes left me and wandered round in alarm.

'No, sane!' I retorted fiercely. 'But I do not like this place any better than you do.' Which was true enough, if not quite true. 'So, by your right, quick march!' I continued imperatively. 'Turn your horse, my friend, or take the consequences.'

He turned like a lamb, and headed down the valley again, without giving a thought to his pistols. I kept close to him, and in less than a minute we had left the Devil's Chapel well behind us, and were moving down again as we had come up. Only now I held the gun.

When we had gone have a mile or so—until then I did not feel comfortable myself, and though I thanked heaven that the place existed, I thanked heaven also that I was out of it—I bade him halt.

'Take off your belt,' I said curtly, 'and throw it down. But, mark me, if you turn I fire.'

The spirit was quite gone out of him, and he obeyed mechanically. I jumped down, still covering him with the gun, and picked up the belt, pistols and all. Then I remounted, and we went on. By-and-by he asked me sullenly what I was going to do.

'Go back,' I said, 'and take the road to Auch when I come to it.'

'It will be dark in an hour,' he answered sulkily.

'I know that,' I retorted. 'We must camp and do the best we can.'

And as I said, we did. The daylight held until we gained the skirts of the pine-wood at the head of the pass. Here I chose a corner a little off the track, and well sheltered from the wind, and bade him light a fire. I tethered the horses near this and within sight. Then it remained only to sup. I had a piece of bread: he had another and an onion. We ate in silence, sitting on opposite sides of the fire.

But after supper I found myself in a dilemma; I did not see how I was to sleep. The ruddy light which gleamed on the knave's swart face and sinewy hands showed also his eyes, black, sullen, and watchful. I knew that the man was plotting revenge; that he would not hesitate to plant his knife between my ribs should I give him the chance; and I could find only one alternative to remaining awake. Had I been bloody-minded, I should have chosen it and solved the question at once and in my favour by shooting him as he sat.

But I have never been a cruel man, and I could not find it in my heart to do this. The silence of the mountain and the sky-which seemed a thing apart from the roar of the torrent and not to be broken by it—awed me. The vastness of the solitude in which we sat, the dark void above, through which the stars kept shooting, the black gulf below in which the unseen waters boiled and surged, the absence of other human company or other signs of human existence, put such a face upon the deed that I gave up the thought of it with a shudder, and resigned myself, instead, to watch through the night—the long, cold, Pyrenean night. Presently he curled himself up like a dog and slept in the blaze, and then for a couple of hours I sat opposite him, thinking. It seemed years since I had seen Zaton's or thrown the dice. The old life, the old employments—should I ever go back to them?—seemed dim and distant. Would Cocheforet, the forest and the mountain, the grey Chateau and its mistresses, seem one day as dim? And if one bit of life could fade so quickly at the unrolling of another, and seem in a moment pale and colourless, would all life some day and somewhere, and all the things we—But enough! I was growing foolish. I sprang up and kicked the wood together, and, taking up the gun, began to pace to and fro under the cliff. Strange that a little moonlight, a few stars, a breath of solitude should carry a man back to childhood and childish things.

. . . . . .

It was three in the afternoon of the next day, and the sun lay hot on the oak groves, and the air was full of warmth as we began to climb the slope, midway up which the road to Auch shoots out of the track. The yellow bracken and the fallen leaves underfoot seemed to throw up light of themselves; and here and there a patch of ruddy beech lay like a bloodstain on the hillside. In front a herd of pigs routed among the mast, and grunted lazily; and high above us a boy lay watching them. 'We part here,' I said to my companion.

It was my plan to ride a little way along the road to Auch so as to blind his eyes; then, leaving my horse in the forest, I would go on foot to the Chateau. 'The sooner the better!' he answered with a snarl. 'And I hope I may never see your face again, Monsieur.'

But when we came to the wooden cross at the fork of the roads, and were about to part, the boy we had seen leapt out of the fern and came to meet us.

'Hollo!' he cried in a sing-song tone.

'Well,' my companion answered, drawing rein impatiently. 'What is it?'

'There are soldiers in the village.'

'Soldiers,' Antoine cried incredulously.

'Ay, devils on horseback,' the lad answered, spitting on the ground. 'Three score of them. From Auch.'

Antoine turned to me, his face transformed with fury.

'Curse you!' he cried. 'This is some of your work. Now we are all undone. And my mistresses? SACRE! if I had that gun I would shoot you like a rat.'

'Steady, fool,' I answered roughly. 'I know no more of this than you do.'

Which was so true that my surprise was at least as great as his, and better grounded. The Cardinal, who rarely made a change of front, had sent me hither that he might not be forced to send soldiers, and run the risk of all that might arise from such a movement. What of this invasion, then, than which nothing could be less consistent with his plans? I wondered. It was possible that the travelling merchants, before whom I had played at treason, had reported the facts; and that on this the Commandant at Auch had acted. But it seemed unlikely since he had had his orders too, and under the Cardinal's rule there was small place for individual enterprise. Frankly I could not understand it, and found only one thing clear; I might now enter the village as I pleased.

'I am going on to look into this,' I said to Antoine. 'Come, my man.' He shrugged his shoulders, and stood still.

'Not I!' he answered, with an oath. 'No soldiers for me I have lain out one night, and I can lie out another.'

I nodded indifferently, for I no longer wanted him; and we parted. After this, twenty minutes' riding brought me to the entrance of the village, and here the change was great indeed. Not one of the ordinary dwellers in the place was to be seen: either they had shut themselves up in their hovels, or, like Antoine, they had fled to the woods. Their doors were closed, their windows shuttered. But lounging about the street were a score of dragoons, in boots and breastplates, whose short-barrelled muskets, with pouches and bandoliers attached, were piled near the inn door. In an open space, where there was a gap in the street, a long row of horses, linked head to head, stood bending their muzzles over bundles of rough forage; and on all sides the cheerful jingle of chains and bridles and the sound of coarse jokes and laughter filled the air.

As I rode up to the inn door an old sergeant, with squinting eyes and his tongue in his cheek, scanned me inquisitively, and started to cross the street to challenge me. Fortunately, at that moment the two knaves whom I had brought from Paris with me, and whom I had left at Auch to await my orders, came up. I made them a sign not to speak to me, and they passed on; but I suppose that they told the sergeant that I was not the man he wanted, for I saw no more of him.

After picketing my horse behind the inn—I could find no better stable, every place being full—I pushed my way through the group at the door, and entered. The old room, with the low, grimy roof and the reeking floor, was half full of strange figures, and for a few minutes I stood unseen in the smoke and confusion. Then the landlord came my way, and as he passed me I caught his eye. He uttered a low curse, dropped the pitcher he was carrying, and stood glaring at me like a man possessed.

The soldier whose wine he was carrying flung a crust in his face, with,—

'Now, greasy fingers! What are you staring at?'

'The devil!' the landlord muttered, beginning to tremble.

'Then let me look at him!' the man retorted, and he turned on his stool.

He started, finding me standing over him.

'At your service!' I said grimly. 'A little time and it will be the other way, my friend.



CHAPTER VII. A MASTER STROKE

I have a way with me which commonly commands respect; and when the landlord's first terror was over and he would serve me, I managed to get my supper—the first good meal I had had in two days—pretty comfortably in spite of the soldiers' presence. The crowd, too, which filled the room, soon began to melt. The men strayed off in groups to water their horses, or went to hunt up their quarters, until only two or three were left. Dusk had fallen outside; the noise in the street grew less. The firelight began to glow and flicker on the walls, and the wretched room to look as homely as it was in its nature to look. I was pondering for the twentieth time what step I should take next, and questioning why the soldiers were here, and whether I should let the night pass before I moved, when the door, which had been turning on its hinges almost without pause for an hour, opened again, and a woman came in.

She paused a moment on the threshold looking round, and I saw that she had a shawl on her head and a milk-pitcher in her hand, and that her feet and ankles were bare. There was a great rent in her coarse stuff petticoat, and the hand which held the shawl together was brown and dirty. More I did not see: for, supposing her to be a neighbour stolen in, now that the house was quiet, to get some milk for her child or the like, I took no farther heed of her. I turned to the fire again and plunged into my thoughts.

But to get to the hearth where the goodwife was fidgeting the woman had to pass in front of me; and as she passed I suppose that she stole a look at me from under her shawl. For just when she came between me and the blaze she uttered a low cry and shrank aside—so quickly that she almost stepped on the hearth. The next moment she turned her back to me, and was stooping whispering in the housewife's ear. A stranger might have thought that she had trodden on a hot ember.

But another idea, and a very strange one, came into my mind; and I stood up silently. The woman's back was towards me, but something in her height, her shape, the pose of her head hidden as it was by her shawl, seemed familiar. I waited while she hung over the fire whispering, and while the goodwife slowly filled her pitcher out of the great black pot. But when she turned to go, I took a step forward so as to bar her way. And our eyes met.

I could not see her features; they were lost in the shadow of the hood. But I saw a shiver run through her from head to foot. And I knew then that I had made no mistake.

'That is too heavy for you, my girl,' I said familiarly, as I might have spoken to a village wench. 'I will carry it for you.'

One of the men, who remained lolling at the table, laughed, and the other began to sing a low song. The woman trembled in rage or fear; but she kept silence and let me take the jug from her hands; and when I went to the door and opened it, she followed mechanically. An instant, and the door fell to behind us, shutting off the light and glow, and we two stood together in the growing dusk.

'It is late for you to be out, Mademoiselle,' I said politely. 'You might meet with some rudeness, dressed as you are. Permit me to see you home.'

She shuddered, and I thought that I heard her sob, but she did not answer. Instead, she turned and walked quickly through the village in the direction of the Chateau, keeping in the shadow of the houses. I carried the pitcher and walked close to her, beside her; and in the dark I smiled. I knew how shame and impotent rage were working in her. This was something like revenge!

Presently I spoke.

'Well, Mademoiselle,' I said, 'where are your grooms?'

She gave me one look, her eyes blazing with anger, her face like hate itself; and after that I said no more, but left her in peace, and contented myself with walking at her shoulder until we came to the end of the village, where the track to the great house plunged into the wood. There she stopped, and turned on me like a wild creature at bay.

'What do you want?' she cried hoarsely, breathing as if she had been running.

'To see you safe to the house,' I answered coolly. 'Alone you might be insulted.'

'And if I will not?' she retorted.

'The choice does not lie with you, Mademoiselle,' I answered sternly, 'You will go to the house with me, and on the way you will give me an interview—late as it is; but not here. Here we are not private enough. We may be interrupted at any moment, and I wish to speak to you at length.'

'At length?' she muttered.

'Yes, Mademoiselle.'

I saw her shiver. 'What if I will not?' she said again.

'I might call to the nearest soldiers and tell them who you are,' I answered coolly. 'I might do that, but I should not. That were a clumsy way of punishing you, and I know a better way. I should go to the Captain, Mademoiselle, and tell him whose horse is locked up in the inn stable. A trooper told me—as someone had told him—that it belonged to one of his officers; but I looked through the crack, and I knew the horse again.'

She could not repress a groan. I waited; still she did not speak.

'Shall I go to the Captain?' I said ruthlessly.

She shook the hood back from her face and looked at me.

'Oh, you coward! you coward!' she hissed through her teeth. 'If I had a knife!'

'But you have not, Mademoiselle,' I answered, unmoved. 'Be good enough, therefore, to make up your mind which it is to be. Am I to go with my news to the captain, or am I to come with you?'

'Give me the pitcher,' she said harshly.

I did so, wondering. In a moment she flung it with a savage gesture far into the bushes.

'Come!' she said, 'if you will. But some day God will punish you!'

Without another word she turned and entered the path through the trees, and I followed her. I suppose that every one of its windings, every hollow and broken place in it had been known to her from childhood, for she followed it swiftly and unerringly, barefoot as she was. I had to walk fast through the darkness to keep up with her. The wood was quiet, but the frogs were beginning to croak in the pool, and their persistent chorus reminded me of the night when I had come to the house-door, hurt and worn out, and Clon had admitted me, and she had stood under the gallery in the hall. Things had looked dark then. I had seen but a very little way ahead then. Now all was plain. The commandant might be here with all his soldiers, but it was I who held the strings.

We came to the little wooden bridge and saw beyond the dark meadows the lights of the house. All the windows were bright. Doubtless the troopers were making merry.

'Now, Mademoiselle,' I said quietly, 'I must trouble you to stop here, and give me your attention for a few minutes. Afterwards you may go your way.'

'Speak!' she said defiantly. 'And be quick! I cannot breathe the air where you are! It poisons me!'

'Ah!' I said slowly. 'Do you think that you make things better by such speeches as those?'

'Oh!' she cried and I heard her teeth click together. 'Would you have me fawn on you?'

'Perhaps not,' I answered. 'Still you make one mistake.'

'What is it?' she panted.

'You forget that I am to be feared as well as—loathed, Mademoiselle! Ay, Mademoiselle, to be feared!' I continued grimly. 'Do you think that I do not know why you are here in this guise? Do you think that I do not know for whom that pitcher of broth was intended? Or who will now have to fast to-night? I tell you I know all these things. Your house was full of soldiers; your servants were watched and could not leave. You had to come yourself and get food for him?'

She clutched at the handrail of the bridge, and for an instant clung to it for support. Her face, from which the shawl had fallen, glimmered white in the shadow of the trees. At last I had shaken her pride. At last!

'What is your price?' she murmured faintly.

'I am going to tell you,' I replied, speaking so that every word might fall distinctly on her ears, and sating my eyes the while on her proud face. I had never dreamed of such revenge as this! 'About a fortnight ago, M. de Cocheforet left here at night with a little orange-coloured sachet in his possession.'

She uttered a stifled cry, and drew herself stiffly erect.

'It contained—but there, Mademoiselle, you know its contents,' I went on. 'Whatever they were, M. de Cocheforet lost it and them at starting. A week ago he came back—unfortunately for himself—to seek them.'

She was looking full in my face now. She seemed scarcely to breathe in the intensity of her surprise and expectation.

'You had a search made, Mademoiselle,' I continued quietly. 'Your servants left no place unexplored The paths, the roads, the very woods were ransacked, But in vain, because all the while the orange sachet lay whole and unopened in my pocket.'

'No!' she cried impetuously. 'There, you lie sir, as usual! The sachet was found, torn open, many leagues from this place!'

'Where I threw it, Mademoiselle,' I replied, 'that I might mislead your rascals and be free to return to you. Oh! believe me,' I continued, letting something of my true self, something of my triumph, appear at last in my voice. 'You have made a mistake! You would have done better had you trusted me. I am no bundle of sawdust, Mademoiselle, though once you got the better of me, but a man; a man with an arm to shield and a brain to serve, and—as I am going to teach you—a heart also!'

She shivered.

'In the orange-coloured sachet that you lost I believe that there were eighteen stones of great value?'

She made no answer, but she looked at me as if I fascinated her. Her very breath seemed to pause and wait on my words. She was so little conscious of anything else, of anything outside ourselves, that a score of men might have come up behind her, unseen and unnoticed.



CHAPTER VIII. A MASTER STROKE—Continued

I took from my breast a little packet wrapped in soft leather, and I held it towards her.

'Will you open this?' I said. 'I believe that it contains what your brother lost. That it contains all I will not answer, Mademoiselle, because I spilled the stones on the floor of my room, and I may have failed to find some. But the others can be recovered; I know where they are.'

She took the packet slowly and began to unroll it, her fingers shaking. A few turns and the mild lustre of the stones shone out, making a kind of moonlight in her hands—such a shimmering glory of imprisoned light as has ruined many a woman and robbed many a man of his honour. MORBLEU! as I looked at them and as she stood looking at them in dull, entranced perplexity—I wondered how I had come to resist the temptation.

While I gazed her hands began to waver.

'I cannot count,' she muttered helplessly. 'How many are there?'

'In all, eighteen.'

'There should be eighteen,' she said.

She closed her hand on them with that, and opened it again, and did so twice, as if to reassure herself that the stones were real and that she was not dreaming. Then she turned to me with sudden fierceness, and I saw that her beautiful face, sharpened by the greed of possession, was grown as keen and vicious as before.

'Well?' she muttered between her teeth.

'Your price, man? Your price?'

'I am coming to it now, Mademoiselle,' I said gravely. 'It is a simple matter. You remember the afternoon when I followed you—clumsily and thoughtlessly perhaps—through the wood to restore these things? In seeming that happened about a month ago. I believe that it happened the day before yesterday. You called me then some very harsh names, which I will not hurt you by repeating. The only price I ask for the restoration of your jewels is that you on your part recall those names.'

'How?' she muttered. 'I do not understand.'

I repeated my words very slowly. 'The only price or reward I ask, Mademoiselle, is that you take back those names and say that they were not deserved.'

'And the jewels?' she exclaimed hoarsely.

'They are yours. They are not mine. They are nothing to me. Take them, and say that you do not think of me—Nay, I cannot say the words, Mademoiselle.'

'But there is something—else! What else?' she cried, her head thrown back, her eyes, bright as any wild animal's, searching mine. 'Ha! my brother? What of him? What of him, sir?'

'For him, Mademoiselle—I would prefer that you should tell me no more than I know already,' I answered in a low voice. 'I do not wish to be in that affair. But yes; there is one thing I have not mentioned. You are right.'

She sighed so deeply that I caught the sound.

'It is,' I continued slowly, 'that you will permit me to remain at Cocheforet for a few days while the soldiers are here. I am told that there are twenty men and two officers quartered in your house. Your brother is away. I ask to be permitted, Mademoiselle, to take his place for the time, and to be privileged to protect your sister and yourself from insult. That is all.'

She raised her hand to her head. After a long pause,—

'The frogs!' she muttered, 'they croak! I can not hear.'

Then, to my surprise, she turned quickly and suddenly on her heel, and walked over the bridge, leaving me standing there. For a moment I stood aghast, peering after her shadowy figure, and wondering what had taken her. Then, in a minute or less, she came quickly back to me, and I understood. She was crying.

'M. de Barthe,' she said, in a trembling voice, which told me that the victory was won, 'is there nothing else? Have you no other penance for me?'

'None, Mademoiselle.'

She had drawn the shawl over her head, and I no longer saw her face.

'That is all you ask?' she murmured.

'That is all I ask—now,' I answered.

'It is granted,' she said slowly and firmly. 'Forgive me if I seem to speak lightly—if I seem to make little of your generosity or my shame; but I can say no more now. I am so deep in trouble and so gnawed by terror that—I cannot feel anything keenly to-night, either shame or gratitude. I am in a dream; God grant that it may pass as a dream! We are sunk in trouble. But for you and what you have done, M. de Barthe—I—' she paused and I heard her fighting with the sobs which choked her—'forgive me... I am overwrought. And my—my feet are cold,' she added, suddenly and irrelevantly. 'Will you take me home?'

'Ah, Mademoiselle,' I cried remorsefully, 'I have been a beast! You are barefoot, and I have kept you here.'

'It is nothing,' she said in a voice which thrilled me. 'My heart is warm, Monsieur—thanks to you. It is many hours since it has been as warm.'

She stepped out of the shadow as she spoke—and there, the thing was done. As I had planned, so it had come about. Once more I was crossing the meadow in the dark to be received at Cocheforet, a welcome guest. The frogs croaked in the pool and a bat swooped round us in circles; and surely never—never, I thought, with a kind of exultation in my breast—had man been placed in a stranger position.

Somewhere in the black wood behind us—probably in the outskirts of the village—lurked M. de Cocheforet. In the great house before us, outlined by a score of lighted windows, were the soldiers come from Auch to take him. Between the two, moving side by side in the darkness, in a silence which each found to be eloquent, were Mademoiselle and I: she who knew so much, I who knew all—all but one little thing!

We reached the house, and I suggested that she should steal in first by the way she had come out, and that I should wait a little and knock at the door when she had had time to explain matters to Clon.

'They do not let me see Clon,' she answered slowly.

'Then your woman must tell him,' I rejoined, 'or he may do something and betray me.'

'They will not let our women come to us.'

'What?' I cried, astonished. 'But this is infamous. You are not prisoners!'

Mademoiselle laughed harshly.

'Are we not? Well, I suppose not; for if we wanted company, Captain Larolle said that he would be delighted to see us—in the parlour.'

'He has taken your parlour?' I said.

'He and his lieutenant sit there. But I suppose that we rebels should be thankful,' she added bitterly; 'we have still our bedrooms left to us.'

'Very well,' I said. 'Then I must deal with Clon as I can. But I have still a favour to ask, Mademoiselle. It is only that you and your sister will descend to-morrow at your usual time. I shall be in the parlour.'

'I would rather not,' she said, pausing and speaking in a troubled voice.

'Are you afraid?'

'No, Monsieur, I am not afraid,' she answered proudly, 'but—'

'You will come?' I said.

She sighed before she spoke. At length,—

'Yes, I will come—if you wish it,' she answered. And the next moment she was gone round the corner of the house, while I laughed to think of the excellent watch these gallant gentlemen were keeping. M. de Cocheforet might have been with her in the garden, might have talked with her as I had talked, might have entered the house even, and passed under their noses scot-free. But that is the way of soldiers. They are always ready for the enemy, with drums beating and flags flying—at ten o'clock in the morning. But he does not always come at that hour.

I waited a little, and then I groped my way to the door and knocked on it with the hilt of my sword. The dogs began to bark at the back, and the chorus of a drinking-song, which came fitfully from the east wing, ceased altogether. An inner door opened, and an angry voice, apparently an officer's, began to rate someone for not coming. Another moment, and a clamour of voices and footsteps seemed to pour into the hall, and fill it. I heard the bar jerked away, the door was flung open, and in a twinkling a lanthorn, behind which a dozen flushed visages were dimly seen, was thrust into my face.

'Why, who the fiend is this?' one cried, glaring at me in astonishment.

'MORBLEU! It is the man!' another shrieked. 'Seize him!'

In a moment half a dozen hands were laid on my shoulders, but I only bowed politely.

'The officer, my friends,' I said, 'M. le Capitaine Larolle. 'Where is he?'

'DIABLE! but who are you, first?' the lanthorn-bearer retorted bluntly. He was a tall, lanky sergeant, with a sinister face.

'Well, I am not M. de Cocheforet,' I replied; 'and that must satisfy you, my man. For the rest, if you do not fetch Captain Larolle at once and admit me, you will find the consequences inconvenient.'

'Ho! ho!' he said with a sneer. 'You can crow, it seems. Well, come in.'

They made way, and I walked into the hall keeping my hat on. On the great hearth a fire had been kindled, but it had gone out. Three or four carbines stood against one wall, and beside them lay a heap of haversacks and some straw. A shattered stool, broken in a frolic, and half a dozen empty wine-skins strewed the floor, and helped to give the place an air of untidiness and disorder. I looked round with eyes of disgust, and my gorge rose. They had spilled oil, and the place reeked foully.

'VENTRE BLEU!' I said. 'Is this conduct in a gentleman's house, you rascals? MA VIE! If I had you I would send half of you to the wooden horse!'

They gazed at me open-mouthed; my arrogance startled them. The sergeant alone scowled. When he could find his voice for rage—

'This way!' he said. 'We did not know that a general officer was coming, or we would have been better prepared!' And muttering oaths under his breath, he led me down the well-known passage. At the door of the parlour he stopped. 'Introduce yourself!' he said rudely. 'And if you find the air warm, don't blame me!'

I raised the latch and went in. At a table in front of the hearth, half covered with glasses and bottles, sat two men playing hazard. The dice rang sharply as I entered, and he who had just thrown kept the box over them while he turned, scowling, to see who came in. He was a fair-haired, blonde man, large-framed and florid. He had put off his cuirass and boots, and his doublet showed frayed and stained where the armour had pressed on it. Otherwise he was in the extreme of last year's fashion. His deep cravat, folded over so that the laced ends drooped a little in front, was of the finest; his great sash of blue and silver was a foot wide. He had a little jewel in one ear, and his tiny beard was peaked A L'ESPAGNOLE. Probably when he turned he expected to see the sergeant, for at the sight of me he rose slowly, leaving the dice still covered.

'What folly is this?' he cried, wrathfully. Here, sergeant! Sergeant!—without there! What the—! Who are you, sir?'

'Captain Larolle,' I said uncovering politely, 'I believe?'

'Yes, I am Captain Larolle,' he retorted. 'But who, in the fiend's name, are you?' You are not the man we are after!'

'I am not M. Cocheforet,' I said coolly. 'I am merely a guest in the house, M. le Capitaine. I have been enjoying Madame de Cocheforet's hospitality for some time, but by an evil chance I was away when you arrived.' And with that I walked to the hearth, and, gently pushing aside his great boots which stood there drying, I kicked the logs into a blaze.

'MILLE DIABLES!' he whispered. And never did I see a man more confounded. But I affected to be taken up with his companion, a sturdy, white-moustachioed old veteran, who sat back in his chair, eyeing me with swollen cheeks and eyes surcharged with surprise.

'Good evening, M. le Lieutenant,' I said, bowing gravely. 'It is a fine night.'

Then the storm burst.

'Fine night!' the Captain shrieked, finding his voice at last. 'MILLE DIABLES! Are you aware, sir, that I am in possession of this house, and that no one harbours here without my permission? Guest? Hospitality? Bundle of fiddle-faddle! Lieutenant, call the guard! Call the guard!' he continued passionately. 'Where is that ape of a sergeant?'

The Lieutenant rose to obey, but I lifted my hand.

'Gently, gently, Captain,' I said. 'Not so fast. You seem surprised to see me here. Believe me, I am much more surprised to see you.'

'SACRE!' he cried, recoiling at this fresh impertinence, while the Lieutenant's eyes almost jumped out of his head.

But nothing moved me.

'Is the door closed?' I said sweetly. 'Thank you; it is, I see. Then permit me to say again, gentlemen, that I am much more surprised to see you than you can be to see me. For when Monseigneur the Cardinal honoured me by sending me from Paris to conduct this matter, he gave me the fullest—the fullest powers, M. le Capitaine—to see the affair to an end. I was not led to expect that my plans would be spoiled on the eve of success by the intrusion of half the garrison from Auch.'

'Oh, ho!' the Captain said softly—in a very different tone, and with a very different face. 'So you are the gentleman I heard of at Auch?'

'Very likely,' I said drily. 'But I am from Paris, not from Auch.'

'To be sure,' he answered thoughtfully. 'Eh, Lieutenant?'

'Yes, M. le Capitaine, no doubt,' the inferior replied. And they both looked at one another, and then at me, in a way I did not understand.

'I think,' said I, to clinch the matter, 'that you have made a mistake, Captain; or the Commandant has. And it occurs to me that the Cardinal will not be best pleased.'

'I hold the King's commission,' he answered rather stiffly.

'To be sure,' I replied. 'But, you see, the Cardinal—'

'Ay, but the Cardinal—' he rejoined quickly; and then he stopped and shrugged his shoulders. And they both looked at me.

'Well?' I said.

'The King,' he answered slowly.

'Tut-tut!' I exclaimed, spreading out my hands. 'The Cardinal. Let us stick to him. You were saying?'

'Well, the Cardinal, you see—' And then again, after the same words, he stopped—stopped abruptly, and shrugged his shoulders.

I began to suspect something.

'If you have anything to say against Monseigneur,' I answered, watching him narrowly, 'say it. But take a word of advice. Don't let it go beyond the door of this room, my friend, and it will do you no harm.'

'Neither here nor outside,' he retorted, looking for a moment at his comrade. 'Only I hold the King's commission. That is all, and, I think, enough.'

'Well—for the rest, will you throw a main?' he answered evasively. 'Good! Lieutenant, find a glass, and the gentleman a seat. And here, for my part, I will give you a toast The Cardinal—whatever betide!'

I drank it, and sat down to play with him; I had not heard the music of the dice for a month, and the temptation was irresistible. But I was not satisfied. I called the mains and won his crowns—he was a mere baby at the game—but half my mind was elsewhere. There was something here that I did not understand; some influence at work on which I had not counted; something moving under the surface as unintelligible to me as the soldiers' presence. Had the Captain repudiated my commission altogether, and put me to the door or sent me to the guard-house, I could have followed that. But these dubious hints, this passive resistance, puzzled me. Had they news from Paris, I wondered? Was the King dead? Or the Cardinal ill? I asked them, but they said no, no, no to all, and gave me guarded answers. And midnight found us still playing; and still fencing.



CHAPTER IX. THE QUESTION

Sweep the room, Monsieur? And remove this medley? But M. le Capitaine—'

'The Captain is in the village,' I replied Sternly. 'And do you move. Move, man, and the thing will be done while you are talking about it. Set the door into the garden open—so.'

'Certainly, it is a fine morning. And the tobacco of M. le Lieutenant—But M. le Capitaine did not—'

'Give orders? Well, I give them,' I answered. 'First of all, remove these beds. And bustle, man, bustle, or I will find something to quicken you!'

In a moment—'And M. le Capitaine's riding-boots?'

'Place them in the passage,' I replied.

'Oh! in the passage?' He paused, looking at them in doubt.

'Yes, booby; in the passage.'

'And the cloaks, Monsieur?'

'There is a bush handy outside the window. Let them air.'

'Ohe, the bush? Well, to be sure they are damp. But—yes, yes, Monsieur, it is done. And the bolsters?'

'There also,' I said harshly. 'Throw them out. Faugh! The place reeks of leather. Now, a clean hearth. And set the table before the open door, so that we may see the garden—so. And tell the cook that we dine at eleven, and that Madame and Mademoiselle will descend.'

'Ohe! But M. le Capitaine ordered the dinner for half-past eleven.'

'It must be advanced, then; and, mark you, my friend, if it is not ready when Madame comes down, you will suffer, and the cook too.'

When he was gone on his errand, I looked round. What else was lacking? The sun shone cheerily on the polished floor; the air, freshened by the rain which had fallen in the night, entered freely through the open doorway. A few bees lingering with the summer hummed outside. The fire crackled bravely; an old hound, blind and past work, lay warming its hide on the hearth. I could think of nothing more, and I stood and stood and watched the man set out the table and spread the cloth.

'For how many, Monsieur?' he asked in a scared tone.

'For five,' I answered; and I could not help smiling at myself.

For what would Zaton's say could it see Berault turned housewife? There was a white glazed cup, an old-fashioned piece of the second Henry's time, standing on a shelf. I took it down and put some late flowers in it, and set it in the middle of the table, and stood off myself to look at it. But a moment later, thinking I heard them coming, I hurried it away in a kind of panic, feeling on a sudden ashamed of the thing. The alarm proved to be false, however; and then again, taking another turn, I set the piece back. I had done nothing so foolish for—for more years than I like to count.

But when Madame and Mademoiselle came down, they had eyes neither for the flowers nor the room. They had heard that the Captain was out beating the village and the woods for the fugitive, and where I had looked for a comedy I found a tragedy. Madame's face was so red with weeping that all her beauty was gone. She started and shook at the slightest sound, and, unable to find any words to answer my greeting, could only sink into a chair and sit crying silently.

Mademoiselle was in a mood scarcely more cheerful. She did not weep, but her manner was hard and fierce. She spoke absently, and answered fretfully. Her eyes glittered, and she had the air of straining her ears continually to catch some dreaded sound.

'There is no news, Monsieur?' she said as she took her seat. And she shot a swift look at me.

'None, Mademoiselle.'

'They are searching the village?'

'I believe so.'

'Where is Clon?' This in a lower voice, and with a kind of shrinking in her face.

I shook my head. 'I believe that they have him confined somewhere. And Louis, too,' I said. 'But I have not seen either of them.'

'And where are—I thought these people would be here,' she muttered. And she glanced askance at the two vacant places. The servant had brought in the meal.

'They will be here presently,' I said coolly. Let us make the most of the time. A little wine and food will do Madame good.'

She smiled rather sadly.

'I think that we have changed places,' she said. 'And that you have turned host and we guests.'

'Let it be so,' I said cheerfully. 'I recommend some of this ragout. Come, Mademoiselle, fasting can aid no one. A full meal has saved many a man's life.'

It was clumsily said, perhaps; for she shuddered and looked at me with a ghastly smile. But she persuaded her sister to take something; and she took something on her own plate and raised her fork to her lips. But in a moment she laid it down again.

'I cannot,' she murmured. 'I cannot swallow. Oh, my God, at this moment they may be taking him.'

I thought that she was about to burst into a passion of tears, and I repented that I had induced her to descend. But her self-control was not yet exhausted. By an effort, painful to see, she recovered her composure. She took up her fork, and ate a few mouthfuls. Then she looked at me with a fierce under-look.

'I want to see Clon,' she whispered feverishly. The man who waited on us had left the room.

'He knows?' I said.

She nodded, her beautiful face strangely disfigured. Her closed teeth showed between her lips. Two red spots burned in her white cheeks, and she breathed quickly. I felt, as I looked at her, a sudden pain at my heart, and a shuddering fear, such as a man, awaking to find himself falling over a precipice, might feel. How these women loved the man!

For a moment I could not speak. When I found my voice it sounded dry and husky.

'He is a safe confidant,' I muttered. 'He can neither read nor write, Mademoiselle.'

'No, but—' and then her face became fixed. 'They are coming,' she whispered. 'Hush!' She rose stiffly, and stood supporting herself by the table. 'Have they—have they—found him?' she muttered. The woman by her side wept on, unconscious of what was impending.

I heard the Captain stumble far down the passage, and swear loudly; and I touched Mademoiselle's hand.

'They have not!' I whispered. 'All is well, Mademoiselle. Pray, pray calm yourself. Sit down and meet them as if nothing were the matter. And your sister! Madame, Madame,' I cried, almost harshly, 'compose yourself. Remember that you have a part to play.'

My appeal did something. Madame stifled her sobs. Mademoiselle drew a deep breath and sat down; and though she was still pale and still trembled, the worst was past.

And only just in time. The door flew open with a crash. The Captain stumbled into the room, swearing afresh.

'SACRE NOM DU DIABLE!' he cried, his face crimson with rage. 'What fool placed these things here? My boots? My—'

His jaw fell. He stopped on the word, stricken silent by the new aspect of the room, by the sight of the little party at the table, by all the changes I had worked.

'SAINT SIEGE!' he muttered. 'What is this?' The Lieutenant's grizzled face peering over his shoulder completed the picture.

'You are rather late, M. le Capitaine,' I said cheerfully. 'Madame's hour is eleven. But, come here are your seats waiting for you.'

'MILLE TONNERRES!' he muttered, advancing into the room, and glaring at us.

'I am afraid that the ragout is cold,' I continued, peering into the dish and affecting to see nothing. 'The soup, however, has been kept hot by the fire. But I think that you do not see Madame.'

He opened his mouth to swear, but for the moment he thought better of it.

'Who—who put my boots in the passage?' he asked, his voice thick with rage. He did not bow to the ladies, or take any notice of their presence.

'One of the men, I suppose,' I said indifferently. 'Is anything missing?'

He glared at me. Then his cloak, spread outside, caught his eye. He strode through the door, saw his holsters lying on the grass, and other things strewn about. He came back.

'Whose monkey game is this?' he snarled, and his face was very ugly. 'Who is at the bottom of this? Speak, sir, or I—'

'Tut-tut,—the ladies!' I said. 'You forget yourself, Monsieur.'

'Forget myself?' he hissed, and this time he did not check his oath. 'Don't talk to me of the ladies! Madame? Bah! Do you think, fool, that we are put into rebel's houses to bow and smile and take dancing lessons?'