UNDER THE RED ROBE

by

STANLEY J. WEYMAN

*

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.              AT ZATON'S

CHAPTER II.             AT THE GREEN PILLAR

CHAPTER III.            THE HOUSE IN THE WOOD

CHAPTER IV.             MADAM AND MADEMOISELLE

CHAPTER V.              REVENGE

CHAPTER VI.             UNDER THE PlC DU MIDI

CHAPTER VII.            A MASTER STROKE

CHAPTER VIII.           A MASTER STROKE--Continued

CHAPTER IX.             THE QUESTION

CHAPTER X.              CLON

CHAPTER XI.             THE ARREST

CHAPTER XII.            THE ROAD TO PARIS

CHAPTER XIII.           AT THE FINGER-POST

CHAPTER XIV.            ST MARTIN'S EVE

CHAPTER XV.             ST MARTIN'S SUMMER


*


UNDER THE RED ROBE


CHAPTER I

AT ZATON'S

'Marked cards!'

There were a score round us when the fool, little knowing the man
with whom he had to deal, and as little how to lose like a
gentleman, flung the words in my teeth.  He thought, I'll be
sworn, that I should storm and swear and ruffle it like any
common cock of the hackle.  But that was never Gil de Berault's
way.  For a few seconds after he had spoken I did not even look
at him.  I passed my eye instead--smiling, BIEN ENTENDU--round
the ring of waiting faces, saw that there was no one except De
Pombal I had cause to fear; and then at last I rose and looked at
the fool with the grim face I have known impose on older and
wiser men.

'Marked cards, M. l'Anglais?'  I said, with a chilling sneer.
'They are used, I am told, to trap players--not unbirched
schoolboys.'

'Yet I say that they are marked!'  he replied hotly, in his queer
foreign jargon.  'In my last hand I had nothing.  You doubled the
stakes.  Bah, sir, you knew!  You have swindled me!'

'Monsieur is easy to swindle--when he plays with a mirror behind
him,' I answered tartly.

At that there was a great roar of laughter, which might have been
heard in the street, and which brought to the table everyone in
the eating-house whom his voice had not already attracted.  But I
did not relax my face.  I waited until all was quiet again, and
then waving aside two or three who stood between us and the
entrance, I pointed gravely to the door.

'There is a little space behind the church of St Jacques, M.
l'Etranger,' I said, putting on my hat and taking my cloak on my
arm.  'Doubtless you will accompany me thither?'

He snatched up his hat, his face burning with shame and rage.

'With pleasure!'  he blurted out.  'To the devil, if you like!'

I thought the matter arranged, when the Marquis laid his hand on
the young fellow's arm and checked him.

'This must not be,' he said, turning from him to me with his
grand, fine-gentleman's air.  'You know me, M. de Berault.  This
matter has gone far enough.'

'Too far!  M. de Pombal,' I answered bitterly.  'Still, if you
wish to take your friend's place, I shall raise no objection.'

'Chut, man!'  he retorted, shrugging his shoulders negligently.
'I know you, and I do not fight with men of your stamp.  Nor need
this gentleman.'

'Undoubtedly,' I replied, bowing low, 'if he prefers to be caned
in the streets.'

That stung the Marquis.

'Have a care!  have a care!'  he cried hotly.  'You go too far,
M. Berault.'

'De Berault, if you please,' I objected, eyeing him sternly.  'My
family has borne the DE as long as yours, M. de Pombal.'

He could not deny that, and he answered, 'As you please;' at the
same time restraining his friend by a gesture.  'But none the
less,' he continued, 'take my advice.  The Cardinal has forbidden
duelling, and this time he means it!  You have been in trouble
once and gone free.  A second time it may fare worse with you.
Let this gentleman go, therefore, M. de Berault.  Besides--why,
shame upon you, man!'  he exclaimed hotly; 'he is but a lad!'

Two or three who stood behind me applauded that, But I turned and
they met my eye; and they were as mum as mice.

'His age is his own concern,' I said grimly.  'He was old enough
a while ago to insult me.'

'And I will prove my words!'  the lad cried, exploding at last.
He had spirit enough, and the Marquis had had hard work to
restrain him so long.  'You do me no service, M. de Pombal,' he
continued, pettishly shaking off his friend's hand.  'By your
leave, this gentleman and I will settle this matter.'

'That is better,' I said, nodding drily, while the Marquis stood
aside, frowning and baffled.  'Permit me to lead the way.'

Zaton's eating-house stands scarcely a hundred paces from St
Jacques la Boucherie, and half the company went thither with us.
The evening was wet, the light in the streets was waning, the
streets themselves were dirty and slippery.  There were few
passers in the Rue St Antoine; and our party, which earlier in
the day must have attracted notice and a crowd, crossed unmarked,
and entered without interruption the paved triangle which lies
immediately behind the church.  I saw in the distance one of the
Cardinal's guard loitering in front of the scaffolding round the
new Hotel Richelieu; and the sight of the uniform gave me pause
for a moment.  But it was too late to repent.

The Englishman began at once to strip off his clothes.  I closed
mine to the throat, for the air was chilly.  At that moment,
while we stood preparing, and most of the company seemed a little
inclined to stand off from me, I felt a hand on my arm, and
turning, saw the dwarfish tailor at whose house, in the Rue
Savonnerie, I lodged at the time.  The fellow's presence was
unwelcome, to say the least of it; and though for want of better
company I had sometimes encouraged him to be free with me at
home, I took that to be no reason why I should be plagued with
him before gentlemen.  I shook him off, therefore, hoping by a
frown to silence him.

He was not to be so easily put down, however, and perforce I had
to speak to him.

'Afterwards, afterwards,' I said hurriedly.  'I am engaged now.

'For God's sake, don't, sir!'  the poor fool cried, clinging to
my sleeve.  'Don't do it!  You will bring a curse on the house.
He is but a lad, and--'

'You, too!'  I exclaimed,losing patience.  'Be silent, you scum!
What do you know about gentlemen's quarrels?  Leave me; do you
hear?'

'But the Cardinal!'  he cried in a quavering voice.  'The
Cardinal, M. de Berault!  The last man you killed is not
forgotten yet.  This time he will be sure to--'

'Leave me, do you hear?'  I hissed.  The fellow's impudence
passed all bounds.  It was as bad as his croaking.  'Begone!'  I
added. 'I suppose you are afraid that he will kill me, and you
will lose your money.'

Frison fell back at that almost as if I had struck him, and I
turned to my adversary, who had been awaiting my motions with
impatience.  God knows he did look young as he stood with his
head bare and his fair hair drooping over his smooth woman's
forehead--a mere lad fresh from the college of Burgundy, if they
have such a thing in England.  I felt a sudden chill as I looked
at him:  a qualm, a tremor, a presentiment.  What was it the
little tailor had said?  That I should--but there, he did not
know.  What did he know of such things?  If I let this pass I
must kill a man a day, or leave Paris and the eating-house, and
starve.

'A thousand pardons,' I said gravely, as I drew and took my
place.  'A dun.  I am sorry that the poor devil caught me so
inopportunely.  Now however, I am at your service.'

He saluted and we crossed swords and began.  But from the first I
had no doubt what the result would be.  The slippery stones and
fading light gave him, it is true, some chance, some advantage,
more than he deserved; but I had no sooner felt his blade than I
knew that he was no swordsman.  Possibly he had taken half-a-
dozen lessons in rapier art, and practised what he learned with
an Englishman as heavy and awkward as himself.  But that was all.
He made a few wild clumsy rushes, parrying widely.  When I had
foiled these, the danger was over, and I held him at my mercy.

I played with him a little while, watching the sweat gather on
his brow and the shadow of the church tower fall deeper and
darker, like the shadow of doom, on his face.  Not out of cruelty
--God knows I have never erred in that direction!--but because,
for the first time in my life, I felt a strange reluctance to
strike the blow.  The curls clung to his forehead; his breath
came and went in gasps; I heard the men behind me and one or two
of them drop an oath; and then I slipped--slipped, and was down
in a moment on my right side, my elbow striking the pavement so
sharply that the arm grew numb to the wrist.

He held off.  I heard a dozen voices cry, 'Now!  now you have
him!'  But he held off.  He stood back and waited with his breast
heaving and his point lowered, until I had risen and stood again.
on my guard.

'Enough!  enough!'  a rough voice behind me cried.  'Don't hurt
the man after that.'

'On guard, sir!'  I answered coldly--for he seemed to waver, and
be in doubt.  'It was an accident.  It shall not avail you
again.'

Several voices cried 'Shame!'  and one, 'You coward!'  But the
Englishman stepped forward, a fixed look in his blue eyes.  He
took his place without a word.  I read in his drawn white face
that he had made up his mind to the worst, and his courage so won
my admiration that I would gladly and thankfully have set one of
the lookers-on--any of the lookers-on--in his place; but that
could not be.  So I thought of Zaton's closed to me, of Pombal's
insult, of the sneers and slights I had long kept at the sword's
point; and, pressing him suddenly in a heat of affected anger, I
thrust strongly over his guard, which had grown feeble, and ran
him through the chest.

When I saw him lying, laid out on the stones with his eyes half
shut, and his face glimmering white in the dusk--not that I saw
him thus long, for there were a dozen kneeling round him in a
twinkling--I felt an unwonted pang.  It passed, however, in a
moment.  For I found myself confronted by a ring of angry faces
--of men who, keeping at a distance, hissed and cursed and
threatened me, calling me Black Death and the like.

They were mostly canaille, who had gathered during the fight, and
had viewed all that passed from the farther side of the railings.
While some snarled and raged at me like wolves, calling me
'Butcher!'  and 'Cut-throat!'  or cried out that Berault was at
his trade again, others threatened me with the vengeance of the
Cardinal, flung the edict in my teeth, and said with glee that
the guard were coming--they would see me hanged yet.

'His blood is on your head!'  one cried furiously.  'He will be
dead in an hour.  And you will swing for him!  Hurrah!'

'Begone,' I said.

'Ay, to Montfaucon,' he answered, mocking me.

'No; to your kennel!'  I replied, with a look which sent him a
yard backwards, though the railings were between us.  And I wiped
my blade carefully, standing a little apart.  For--well, I could
understand it--it was one of those moments when a man is not
popular.  Those who had come with me from the eating-house eyed
me askance, and turned their backs when I drew nearer; and those
who had joined us and obtained admission were scarcely more
polite.

But I was not to be outdone in SANG FROID.  I cocked my hat, and
drawing my cloak over my shoulders, went out with a swagger which
drove the curs from the gate before I came within a dozen paces
of it.  The rascals outside fell back as quickly, and in a moment
I was in the street.  Another moment and I should have been clear
of the place and free to lie by for a while--when, without
warning, a scurry took place round me.  The crowd fled every way
into the gloom, and in a hand-turn a dozen of the Cardinal's
guards closed round me.

I had some acquaintance with the officer in command, and he
saluted me civilly.

'This is a bad business, M. de Berault,' he said.  'The man is
dead they tell me.'

'Neither dying nor dead,' I answered lightly.  'If that be all
you may go home again.'

'With you,' he replied, with a grin, 'certainly.  And as it
rains, the sooner the better.  I must ask you for your sword, I
am afraid.'

'Take it,' I said, with the philosophy which never deserts me.
'But the man will not die.'

'I hope that may avail you,' he answered in a tone I did not
like.  'Left wheel, my friends!  To the Chatelet!  March!'

'There are worse places,' I said, and resigned myself to fate.
After all, I had been in a prison before, and learned that only
one jail lets no prisoner escape.

But when I found that my friend's orders were to hand me over to
the watch, and that I was to be confined like any common jail-
bird caught cutting a purse or slitting a throat, I confess my
heart sank.  If I could get speech with the Cardinal, all would
probably be well; but if I failed in this, or if the case came
before him in strange guise, or if he were in a hard mood
himself, then it might go ill with me.  The edict said, death!

And the lieutenant at the Chatelet did not put himself to much
trouble to hearten me.  'What!  again M. de Berault?'  he said,
raising his eyebrows as he received me at the gate, and
recognised me by the light of the brazier which his men were just
kindling outside.  'You are a very bold man, or a very foolhardy
one, to come here again.  The old business, I suppose?'

'Yes, but he is not dead,' I answered coolly.  'He has a trifle
--a mere scratch.  It was behind the church of St Jacques.'

'He looked dead enough, my friend,' the guardsman interposed.  He
had not yet left us.

'Bah!'  I answered scornfully.  'Have you ever known me make a
mistake When I kill a man I kill him.  I put myself to pains, I
tell you, not to kill this Englishman.  Therefore he will live.'

'I hope so,' the lieutenant said, with a dry smile.  'And you had
better hope so, too, M. de Berault, For if not--'

'Well?'  I said, somewhat troubled.  'If not, what, my friend?'

'I fear he will be the last man you will fight,' he answered.
'And even if he lives, I would not be too sure, my friend.  This
time the Cardinal is determined to put it down.'

'He and I are old friends,' I said confidently.

'So I have heard,' he anwered, with a short laugh.  'I think that
the same was said of Chalais.  I do not remember that it saved
his head.'

This was not reassuring.  But worse was to come.  Early in the
morning orders were received that I should be treated with
especial strictness, and I was given the choice between irons and
one of the cells below the level.  Choosing the latter, I was
left to reflect upon many things; among others, on the queer and
uncertain nature of the Cardinal, who loved, I knew, to play with
a man as a cat with a mouse; and on the ill effects which
sometimes attend a high chest-thrust however carefully delivered.
I only rescued myself at last from these and other unpleasant
reflections by obtaining the loan of a pair of dice; and the
light being just enough to enable me to reckon the throws, I
amused myself for hours by casting them on certain principles of
my own.  But a long run again and again upset my calculations;
and at last brought me to the conclusion that a run of bad luck
may be so persistent as to see out the most sagacious player.
This was not a reflection very welcome to me at the moment.

Nevertheless, for three days it was all the company I had.  At
the end of that time, the knave of a jailor who attended me, and
who had never grown tired of telling me, after the fashion of his
kind, that I should be hanged, came to me with a less assured
air.

'Perhaps you would like a little water?'  he said civilly.

'Why, rascal?'  I asked.

'To wash with,' he answered.

'I asked for some yesterday, and you would not bring it,' I
grumbled.  'However, better late than never.  Bring it now.  If I
must hang, I will hang like a gentleman.  But depend upon it, the
Cardinal will not serve an old friend so scurvy a trick.'

'You are to go to him,' he announced, when he came back with the
water.

'What?  To the Cardinal?'  I cried.

'Yes,' he answered.

'Good!'  I exclaimed; and in my joy and relief I sprang up at
once, and began to refresh my dress.  'So all this time I have
been doing him an injustice,' I continued.  'VIVE MONSEIGNEUR!
Long live the little Bishop of Luchon!  I might have known it,
too.'

'Don't make too sure!'  the man answered spitefully.  Then he
went on, 'I have something else for you.  A friend of yours left
it at the gate,' and he handed me a packet.

'Quite so!'  I said, leading his rascally face aright.  'And you
kept it as long as you dared--as long as you thought I should
hang, you knave!  Was not that so?  But there, do not lie to me.
Tell me instead which of my friends left it.'  For, to confess
the truth, I had not so many friends at this time and ten good
crowns--the packet contained no less a sum--argued a pretty
staunch friend, and one of whom a man might reasonably be proud.

The knave sniggered maliciously.  'A crooked dwarfish man left
it,' he said.  'I doubt I might call him a tailor and not be far
out.'

'Chut!'  I answered--but I was a little out of countenance,
nevertheless.  'I understand.  An honest fellow enough, and in
debt to me!  I am glad he remembered.  But when am I to go,
friend?'

'In an hour,' he answered sullenly.  Doubtless he had looked to
get one of the crowns; but I was too old a hand for that.  If I
came back I could buy his services; and if I did not I should
have wasted my money.

Nevertheless, a little later, when I found myself on my way to
the Hotel Richelieu under so close a guard that I could see
nothing in the street except the figures that immediately
surrounded me, I wished that I had given him the money.  At such
times, when all hangs in the balance and the sky is overcast, the
mind runs on luck and old superstitions, and is prone to think a
crown given here may avail there--though THERE be a hundred
leagues away.

The Palais Richelieu was at this time in building, and we were
required to wait in a long, bare gallery, where the masons were
at work.  I was kept a full hour here, pondering uncomfortably on
the strange whims and fancies of the great man who then ruled
France as the King's Lieutenant-General, with all the King's
powers, and whose life I had once been the means of saving by a
little timely information.  On occasion he had done something to
wipe out the debt; and at other times he had permitted me to be
free with him, and so far we were not unknown to one another.

Nevertheless, when the doors were at last thrown open, and I was
led into his presence, my confidence underwent a shock.  His cold
glance, that, roving over me, regarded me not as a man but an
item, the steely glitter of his southern eyes, chilled me to the
bone.  The room was bare, the floor without carpet or covering.
Some of the woodwork lay about, unfinished and in pieces.  But
the man--this man, needed no surroundings.  His keen pale face,
his brilliant eyes, even his presence--though he was of no great
height, and began already to stoop at the shoulders--were enough
to awe the boldest.  I recalled, as I looked at him, a hundred
tales of his iron will, his cold heart, his unerring craft.  He
had humbled the King's brother, the splendid Duke of Orleans, in
the dust.  He had curbed the Queen-mother.  A dozen heads, the
noblest in France, had come to the block through him.  Only two
years before he had quelled Rochelle; only a few months before he
had crushed the great insurrection in Languedoc:  and though the
south, stripped of its old privileges, still seethed with
discontent, no one in this year 1630 dared lift a hand against
him--openly, at any rate.  Under the surface a hundred plots, a
thousand intrigues, sought his life or his power; but these, I
suppose, are the hap of every great man.

No wonder, then, that the courage on which I plumed myself sank
low at sight of him; or that it was as much as I could do to
mingle with the humility of my salute some touch of the SANG
FROID of old acquaintanceship.

And perhaps that had had been better left out.  For it seemed
that this man was without bowels.  For a moment, while he stood
looking at me, and before he spoke to me, I gave myself up for
lost.  There was a glint of cruel satisfaction in his eyes that
warned me, before he opened his mouth, what he was going to say
to me.

'I could not have made a better catch, M. de Berault,' he said,
smiling villainously, while he gently smoothed the fur of a cat
that had sprung on the table beside him.  'An old offender, and
an excellent example.  I doubt it will not stop with you.  But
later, we will make you the warrant for flying at higher game.'

'Monseigneur has handled a sword himself,' I blurted out.  The
very room seemed to be growing darker, the air colder.  I was
never nearer fear in my life.

'Yes?'  he said, smiling delicately.  'And so--?'

'Will not be too hard on the failings of a poor gentleman.'

'He shall suffer no more than a rich one,' he replied suavely as
he stroked the cat.  'Enjoy that satisfaction, M. de Berault.  Is
that all?'

'Once I was of service to your Eminence,' I said desperately.

'Payment has been made,' he answered, 'more than once.  But for
that I should not have seen you.'

'The King's face!'  I cried, snatching at the straw he seemed to
hold out.

He laughed cynically, smoothly.  His thin face, his dark
moustache, and whitening hair, gave him an air of indescribable
keenness.

'I am not the King,' he said.  'Besides, I am told that you have
killed as many as six men in duels.  You owe the King, therefore,
one life at least.  You must pay it.  There is no more to be
said, M. de Berault,' he continued coldly, turning away and
beginning to collect some papers.  'The law must take its
course.'

I thought that he was about to nod to the lieutenant to withdraw
me, and a chilling sweat broke out down my back.  I saw the
scaffold, I felt the cords.  A moment, and it would be too late!

'I have a favour to ask,' I stammered desperately, 'if your
Eminence will give me a moment alone.'

'To what end?'  he answered, turning and eyeing me with cold
disfavour.  'I know you--your past--all.  It can do no good, my
friend.'

'No harm!'  I cried.  'And I am a dying man, Monseigneur!'

'That is true,' he said thoughtfully.  Still he seemed to
hesitate; and my heart beat fast.  At last he looked at the
lieutenant.  'You may leave us,' he said shortly.  'Now,' he
continued, when the officer had withdrawn and left us alone,
'what is it?  Say what you have to say quickly.  And, above all,
do not try to fool me, M. de Berault.'

But his piercing eyes so disconcerted me now that I had my
chance, and was alone with him, that I could not find a word to
say, and stood before him mute.  I think this pleased him, for
his face relaxed.

'Well?'  he said at last.  'Is that all?'

'The man is not dead,' I muttered.

He shrugged his shoulders contemptuously.

'What of that?'  he said.  'That was not what you wanted to say
to me.'

'Once I saved your Eminence's life,' I faltered miserably.

'Admitted,' he answered, in his thin, incisive voice.  'You
mentioned the fact before.  On the other hand, you have taken six
to my knowledge, M. de Berault.  You have lived the life of a
bully, a common bravo, a gamester.  You, a man of family!  For
shame!  Do you wonder that it has brought you to this!  Yet on
that one point I am willing to hear more,' he added abruptly.

'I might save your Eminence's life again,' I cried.  It was a
sudden inspiration.

'You know something?'  he said quickly, fixing me with his eyes.
'But no,' he continued, shaking his head gently.  'Pshaw!  The
trick is old.  I have better spies than you, M. de Berault.'

'But no better sword,' I cried hoarsely.  'No, not in all your
guard!'

'That is true,' he said slowly.  'That is true.'
To my surprise, he spoke in a tone of consideration; and he
looked down at the floor.  'Let me think, my friend,' he
continued.

He walked two or three times up and down the room, while I stood
trembling.  I confess it, trembling.  The man whose pulses danger
has no power to quicken, is seldom proof against suspense; and
the sudden hope his words awakened in me so shook me that his
figure as he trod lightly to and fro with the cat rubbing against
his robe and turning time for time with him, wavered before my
eyes.  I grasped the table to steady myself.  I had not admitted
even in my own mind how darkly the shadow of Montfaucon and the
gallows had fallen across me.

I had leisure to recover myself, for it was some time before he
spoke.  When he did, it was in a voice harsh, changed,
imperative.  'You have the reputation of a man faithful, at
least, to his employer,' he said.  'Do not answer me.  I say it
is so.  Well, I will trust you.  I will give you one more chance
--though it is a desperate one.  Woe to you if you fail me!  Do
you know Cocheforet in Bearn?  It is not far from Auch.'

'No, your Eminence.'

'Nor M. de Cocheforet?'

'No, your Eminence.'

'So much the better,' he replied.  'But you have heard of him.
He has been engaged in every Gascon plot since the late King's
death, and gave more trouble last year in the Vivarais than any
man twice his years.  At present he is at Bosost in Spain, with
other refugees, but I have learned that at frequent intervals he
visits his wife at Cocheforet which is six leagues within the
border.  On one of these visits he must be arrested.'

'That should be easy,' I said.

The Cardinal looked at me.  'Chut, man!  what do you know about
it?'  he answered bluntly.  'It is whispered at Cocheforet if a
soldier crosses the street at Auch.  In the house are only two or
three servants, but they have the countryside with them to a man,
and they are a dangerous breed.  A spark might kindle a fresh
rising.  The arrest, therefore, must be made secretly.'

I bowed.

'One resolute man inside the house,' the Cardinal continued,
thoughtfully glancing at a paper which lay on the table, 'with
the help of two or three servants whom he could summon to his aid
at will, might effect it.  The question is, Will you be the man,
my friend?'

I hesitated; then I bowed.  What choice had I?

'Nay, nay, speak out!'  he said sharply.  'Yes or no, M. de
Berault?'

'Yes, your Eminence,' I said reluctantly.  Again, I say, what
choice had I?

'You will bring him to Paris, and alive.  He knows things, and
that is why I want him.  You understand?'

'I understand, Monseigneur,' I answered.

'You will get into the house as you can,' he continued with
energy.  'For that you will need strategy, and good strategy.
They suspect everybody.  You must deceive them.  If you fail to
deceive them, or, deceiving them, are found out later, I do not
think that you will trouble me again, or break the edict a second
time.  On the other hand, should you deceive me'--he smiled still
more subtly, but his voice sank to a purring note--'I will break
you on the wheel like the ruined gamester you are!'

I met his look without quailing.  'So be it!'  I said recklessly.
'If I do not bring M. de Cocheforet to Paris, you may do that to
me, and more also!'

'It is a bargain!'  he answered slowly.  'I think that you will
be faithful.  For money, here are a hundred crowns.  That sum
should suffice; but if you succeed you shall have twice as much
more.  That is all, I think.  You understand?'

'Yes, Monseigneur.'

'Then why do you wait?'

'The lieutenant?'  I said modestly.

The Cardinal laughed to himself, and sitting down wrote a word or
two on a slip of paper.  'Give him that,' he said in high good-
humour.  'I fear, M. de Berault, you will never get your deserts
--in this world!'



CHAPTER II.

AT THE GREEN PILLAR

Cocheforet lies in a billowy land of oak and beech and chestnuts
--a land of deep, leafy bottoms and hills clothed with forest.
Ridge and valley, glen and knoll, the woodland, sparsely peopled
and more sparsely tilled, stretches away to the great snow
mountains that here limit France.  It swarms with game--with
wolves and bears, deer and boars.  To the end of his life I have
heard that the great king loved this district, and would sigh,
when years and State fell heavily on him, for the beech groves
and box-covered hills of South Bearn.  From the terraced steps of
Auch you can see the forest roll away in light and shadow, vale
and upland, to the base of the snow peaks; and, though I come
from Brittany and love the smell of the salt wind, I have seen
few sights that outdo this.

It was the second week of October, when I came to Cocheforet,
and, dropping down from the last wooded brow, rode quietly into
the place at evening.  I was alone, and had ridden all day in a
glory of ruddy beech leaves, through the silence of forest roads,
across clear brooks and glades still green.  I had seen more of
the quiet and peace of the country than had been my share since
boyhood, and for that reason, or because I had no great taste for
the task before me--the task now so imminent--I felt a little
hipped.  In good faith, it was not a gentleman's work that I was
come to do, look at it how you might.

But beggars must not be choosers, and I knew that this feeling
would not last.  At the inn, in the presence of others, under the
spur of necessity, or in the excitement of the chase, were that
once begun, I should lose the feeling.  When a man is young he
seeks solitude, when he is middle-aged, he flies it and his
thoughts.  I made therefore for the 'Green Pillar,' a little inn
in the village street, to which I had been directed at Auch, and,
thundering on the door with the knob of my riding switch, railed
at the man for keeping me waiting.

Here and there at hovel doors in the street--which was a mean,
poor place, not worthy of the name--men and women looked out at
me suspiciously.  But I affected to ignore them; and at last the
host came.  He was a fair-haired man, half-Basque, half-
Frenchman, and had scanned me well, I was sure, through some
window or peephole; for when he came out he betrayed no surprise
at the sight of a well-dressed stranger--a portent in that out-
of-the-way village--but eyed me with a kind of sullen reserve.

'I can lie here to-night, I suppose?'  I said, dropping the reins
on the sorrel's neck.  The horse hung its head.

'I don't know,' he answered stupidly.

I pointed to the green bough which topped a post that stood
opposite the door.

'This is an inn, is it not?'  I said.

'Yes,' he answered slowly.  'It is an inn.  But--'

'But you are full, or you are out of food, or your wife is ill,
or something else is amiss,' I answered peevishly.  'All the
same, I am going to lie here.  So you must make the best of it,
and your wife too--if you have one.'

He scratched his head, looking at me with an ugly glitter in his
eyes.  But he said nothing, and I dismounted.

'Where can I stable my horse?'  I asked.

'I'll put it up,' he answered sullenly, stepping forward and
taking the reins in his hand.

'Very well,' I said.  'But I go with you.  A merciful man is
merciful to his beast, and wherever I go I see my horse fed.'

'It will be fed,' he said shortly.  And then he waited for me to
go into the house.  'The wife is in there,' he continued, looking
at me stubbornly.

'IMPRIMIS--if you understand Latin, my friend,' I answered.  'the
horse in the stall.'

He saw that it was no good, turned the sorrel slowly round, and
began to lead it across the village street.  There was a shed
behind the inn, which I had already marked, and taken for the
stable, I was surprised when I found that he was not going there,
but I made no remark, and in a few minutes saw the horse made
comfortable in a hovel which seemed to belong to a neighbour.

This done, the man led the way back to the inn, carrying my
valise.

'You have no other guests?'  I said, with a casual air.  I knew
that he was watching me closely.

'No,' he answered.

'This is not much in the way to anywhere, I suppose?'

'No.'

That was so evident, that I never saw a more retired place.  The
hanging woods, rising steeply to a great height, so shut the
valley in that I was puzzled to think how a man could leave it
save by the road I had come.  The cottages, which were no more
than mean, small huts, ran in a straggling double line, with many
gaps--through fallen trees and ill-cleared meadows.  Among them
a noisy brook ran in and out, and the inhabitants--charcoal-
burners, or swine-herds, or poor devils of the like class, were
no better than their dwellings.  I looked in vain for the
Chateau.  It was not to be seen, and I dared not ask for it.

The man led me into the common room of the tavern--a low-roofed,
poor place, lacking a chimney or glazed windows, and grimy with
smoke and use.  The fire--a great half-burned tree--smouldered on
a stone hearth, raised a foot from the floor.  A huge black pot
simmered over it, and beside one window lounged a country fellow
talking with the goodwife.  In the dusk I could not see his face,
but I gave the woman a word, and sat down to wait for my supper.

She seemed more silent than the common run of her kind; but this
might be because her husband was present.  While she moved about
getting my meal, he took his place against the door-post and fell
to staring at me so persistently that I felt by no means at my
ease.  He was a tall, strong fellow, with a shaggy moustache and
brown beard, cut in the mode Henri Quatre; and on the subject of
that king--a safe one, I knew, with a Bearnais--and on that
alone, I found it possible to make him talk.  Even then there was
a suspicious gleam in his eyes that bade me abstain from
questions; so that as the darkness deepened behind him, and the
firelight played more and more strongly on his features, and I
thought of the leagues of woodland that lay between this remote
valley and Auch, I recalled the Cardinal's warning that if I
failed in my attempt I should be little likely to trouble Paris
again.

The lout by the window paid no attention to me; nor I to him,
when I had once satisfied myself that he was really what he
seemed to be.  But by-and-by two or three men--rough, uncouth
fellows--dropped in to reinforce the landlord, and they, too
seemed to have no other business than to sit in silence looking
at me, or now and again to exchange a word in a PATOIS of their
own.  By the time my supper was ready, the knaves numbered six in
all; and, as they were armed to a man with huge Spanish knives,
and made it clear that they resented my presence in their dull
rustic fashion--every rustic is suspicious--I began to think
that, unwittingly, I had put my head into a wasps' nest.

Nevertheless, I ate and drank with apparent appetite; but little
that passed within the circle of light cast by the smoky lamp
escaped me.  I watched the men's looks and gestures at least as
sharply as they watched mine; and all the time I was racking my
wits for some mode of disarming their suspicions, or failing
that, of learning something more of the position, which far
exceeded in difficulty and danger anything that I had expected.
The whole valley, it would seem, was on the look-out to protect
my man!

I had purposely brought with me from Auch a couple of bottles of
choice Armagnac; and these had been carried into the house with
my saddle bags.  I took one out now and opened it and carelessly
offered a dram of the spirit to the landlord.  He took it.  As he
drank it, I saw his face flush; he handed back the cup
reluctantly, and on that hint I offered him another, The strong
spirit was already beginning to work, and he accepted, and in a
few minutes began to talk more freely and with less of the
constraint which had before marked us all.  Still, his tongue ran
chiefly on questions--he would know this, he would learn that;
but even this was a welcome change.  I told him openly whence I
had come, by what road, how long I had stayed in Auch, and where;
and so far I satisfied his curiosity.  Only, when I came to the
subject of my visit to Cocheforet I kept a mysterious silence,
hinting darkly at business in Spain and friends across the
border, and this and that; in this way giving the peasants to
understand, if they pleased, that I was in the same interest as
their exiled master.

They took the bait, winked at one another, and began to look at
me in a more friendly way--the landlord foremost.  But when I had
led them so far, I dared go no farther, lest I should commit
myself and be found out.  I stopped, therefore, and, harking back
to general subjects, chanced to compare my province with theirs.
The landlord, now become almost talkative, was not slow to take
up this challenge; and it presently led to my acquiring a curious
piece of knowledge.  He was boasting of his great snow mountains,
the forests that propped them, the bears that roamed in them, the
izards that loved the ice, and the boars that fed on the oak
mast.

'Well,' I said, quite by chance, 'we have not these things, it is
true.  But we have things in the north you have not.  We have
tens of thousands of good horses--not such ponies as you breed
here.  At the horse fair at Fecamp my sorrel would be lost in the
crowd.  Here in the south you will not meet his match in a long
day's journey.'

'Do not make too sure of that,' the man replied, his eyes bright
with triumph and the dram.  'What would you say if I showed you a
better--in my own stable?'

I saw that his words sent a kind of thrill through his other
hearers, and that such of them as understood for two or three of
them talked their PATOIS only--looked at him angrily; and in a
twinkling I began to comprehend.  But I affected dullness, and
laughed in scorn.

'Seeing is believing,' I said.  'I doubt if you knows good horse
when you see one, my friend.'

'Oh, don't I?'  he said, winking.  'Indeed!'

'I doubt it,' I answered stubbornly.

'Then come with me, and I will show you one,' he retorted,
discretion giving way to vain-glory.  His wife and the others, I
saw, looked at him dumbfounded; but, without paying any heed to
them, he rose, took up a lanthorn, and, assuming an air of
peculiar wisdom, opened the door.  'Come with me,' he continued.
'I don't know a good horse when I see one, don't I?  I know a
better than yours, at anyrate!'

I should not have been surprised if the other men had interfered;
but I suppose he was a leader among them, they did not, and in a
moment we were outside.  Three paces through the darkness took us
to the stable, an offset at the back of the inn.  My man twirled
the pin, and, leading the way in, raised his lanthorn.  A horse
whinnied softly, and turned its bright, mild eyes on us--a
baldfaced chestnut, with white hairs in its tail and one white
stocking.

'There!'  my guide exclaimed, waving the lanthorn to and fro
boastfully, that I might see its points.  'What do you say to
that?  Is that an undersized pony?'

'No,' I answered, purposely stinting my praise.  'It is pretty
fair--for this country.'

'Or any country,' he answered wrathfully.  'Or any country, I
say--I don't care where it is!  And I have reason to know!  Why,
man, that horse is--But there, that is a good horse, if ever you
saw one!'  And with that he ended--abruptly and lamely; lowered
the lanthorn with a sudden gesture, and turned to the door.  He
was on the instant in such hurry to leave that he almost
shouldered me out.

But I understood.  I knew that he had neatly betrayed all--that
he had been on the point of blurting out that that was M. de
Cocheforet's horse!  M. Cocheforet's COMPRENEZ BIEN!  And while I
turned away my face in the darkness that he might not see me
smile, I was not surprised to find the man in a moment changed,
and become, in the closing of the door, as sober and suspicious
as before, ashamed of himself and enraged with me, and in a mood
to cut my throat for a trifle.

It was not my cue to quarrel, however.  I made therefore, as if I
had seen nothing, and when we were back in the inn praised the
horse grudgingly, and like a man but half convinced.  The ugly
looks and ugly weapons I saw round me were fine incentives to
caution; and no Italian, I flatter myself, could have played his
part more nicely than I did.  But I was heartily glad when it was
over, and I found myself, at last, left alone for the night in a
little garret--a mere fowl-house--upstairs, formed by the roof
and gable walls, and hung with strings of apples and chestnuts.
It was a poor sleeping-place--rough, chilly, and unclean.  I
ascended to it by a ladder; my cloak and a little fern formed my
only bed.  But I was glad to accept it, for it enabled me to he
alone and to think out the position unwatched.

Of course M. de Cocheforet was at the Chateau.  He had left his
horse here, and gone up on foot; probably that was his usual
plan.  He was therefore within my reach, in one sense--I could
not have come at a better time--but in another he was as much
beyond it as if I were still in Paris.  For so far was I from
being able to seize him that I dared not ask a question, or let
fall a rash word, or even look about me freely.  I saw I dared
not.  The slightest hint of my mission, the faintest breath of
distrust, would lead to throat-cutting--and the throat would be
mine; while the longer I lay in the village, the greater
suspicion I should incur, and the closer would be the watch kept
upon me.

In such a position some men might have given up the attempt in
despair, and saved themselves across the border.  But I have
always valued myself on my fidelity, and I did not shrink.  If
not to-day, to-morrow; if not this time, next time.  The dice do
not always turn up aces.  Bracing myself, therefore, to the
occasion, I crept, as soon as the house was quiet, to the window,
a small, square, open lattice, much cobwebbed, and partly stuffed
with hay.  I looked out.  The village seemed to be asleep.  The
dark branches of trees hung a few feet away, and almost obscured
a grey, cloudy sky, through which a wet moon sailed drearily.
Looking downwards, I could at first see nothing; but as my eyes
grew used to the darkness--I had only just put out my rushlight--
I made out the stable door and the shadowy outlines of the
lean-to roof.

I had hoped for this, for I could now keep watch, and learn at
least whether Cocheforet left before morning.  If he did not, I
should know he was still here.  If he did, I should be the better
for seeing his features, and learning, perhaps, other things that
might be of use to me in the future.

Making up my mind to the uncomfortable, I sat down on the floor
by the lattice, and began a vigil that might last, I knew, until
morning.  It did last about an hour, at the end of which time I
heard whispering below, then footsteps; then, as some persons
turned a corner, a voice speaking aloud and carelessly.  I could
not catch the words or meaning, but the voice was a gentleman's,
and its bold accents and masterful tone left me in no doubt that
the speaker was M. de Cocheforet himself.  Hoping to learn more,
I pressed my face nearer to the opening, and had just made out
through the gloom two figures--one that of a tall, slight man,
wearing a cloak, the other, I fancied, a woman's, in a sheeny
white dress--when a thundering rap on the door of my garret made
me spring back a yard from the lattice, and lie down hurriedly on
my couch.  The summons was repeated.

'Well?'  I cried, rising on my elbow, and cursing the untimely
interruption.  I was burning with anxiety to see more.  'What is
it?  What is the matter?'

The trap-door was lifted a foot or more.  The landlord thrust up
his head.

'You called, did you not?'  he said.

He held up a rushlight, which illumined half the room and lit up
his grinning face.

'Called--at this hour of the night, you fool?'  I answered
angrily.  'No!  I did not call.  Go to bed, man!'

But he remained on the ladder, gaping stupidly.  'I heard you,'
he said.

'Go to bed!  You are drunk,' I answered, sitting up.  'I tell you
I did not call.'

'Oh, very well,' he answered slowly.  'And you do not want
anything?'

'Nothing--except to be left alone,' I replied sourly.

'Umph!'  he said.  'Good-night!'

'Good-night!  Good-night!'  I answered with what patience I
might.  The tramp of the horse's hoofs as it was led out of the
stable was in my ears at the moment.  'Good-night!'  I continued
feverishly, hoping that he would still retire in time, and I have
a chance to look out.  'I want to sleep.'

'Good,' he said, with a broad grin.  'But it is early yet, and
you have plenty of time.'

And then, at last, he slowly let down the trap-door, and I heard
him chuckle as he went down the ladder.

Before he reached the bottom I was at the window.  The woman,
whom I had seen, still stood below in the same place, and beside
her was a man in a peasant's dress, holding a lanthorn.  But the
man, the man I wanted to see, was no longer there.  He was gone,
and it was evident that the others no longer feared me; for while
I gazed the landlord came out to them with another lanthorn
swinging in his hand, and said something to the lady, and she
looked up at my window and laughed.

It was a warm night, and she wore nothing over her white dress.
I could see her tall, shapely figure and shining eyes, and the
firm contour of her beautiful face, which, if any fault might be
found with it, erred in being too regular.  She looked like a
woman formed by nature to meet dangers and difficulties, and to
play a great part; even here, at midnight, in the midst of these
desperate men, she did not seem out of place.  I could fancy--I
did not find it impossible to fancy--that under her queenly
exterior, and behind the contemptuous laugh with which she heard
the landlord's story, there lurked a woman's soul, a soul capable
of folly and tenderness.  But no outward sign betrayed its
presence--as I saw her then.

I scanned her very carefully; and secretly, if the truth be told,
I was glad to find that Madame de Cocheforet was such a woman.  I
was glad that she had laughed as she had--with a ring of disdain
and defiance; glad that she was not a little, tender, child-like
woman, to be crushed by the first pinch of trouble.  For if I
succeeded in my task, if I contrived to--but, pish!  Women, I
told myself, were all alike.  She would find consolation quickly
enough.

I watched until the group broke up, and Madame, with one of the
men, went her way round the corner of the inn, and out of my
sight.  Then I retired to bed again, feeling more than ever
perplexed what course I should adopt.  It was clear that to
succeed I must obtain admission to the house, which was
garrisoned, according to my instructions, by two or three old
men-servants only, and as many women; since Madame, to disguise
her husband's visits the more easily, lived, and gave out that
she lived, in great retirement.  To seize her husband at home,
therefore, might be no impossible task; though here, in the heart
of the village, a troop of horse might make the attempt, and
fail.

But how was I to gain admission to the house--a house guarded by
quick-witted women, and fenced with all the precautions love
could devise?  That was the question; and dawn found me still
debating it, still as far as ever from an answer.  Anxious and
feverish, I was glad when the light came, and I could get up.  I
thought that the fresh air might inspire me, and I was tired of
my stuffy closet.  I crept stealthily down the ladder, and
managed to pass unseen through the lower room, in which several
persons were snoring heavily.  The outer door was not fastened,
and in a hand-turn I was in the street.

It was still so early that the trees stood up black against the
reddening sky, but the bough upon the post before the door was
growing green, and in a few minutes the grey light would be
everywhere.  Already, even in the roadway, there was a glimmering
of it; and as I stood at the corner of the house--where I could
command both the front and the side on which the stable opened
--sniffing the fresh air, and looking for any trace of the
midnight departure, my eyes detected something light-coloured
lying on the ground.  It was not more than two or three paces
from me, and I stepped to it and picked it up curiously, hoping
that it might be a note.  It was not a note, however, but a tiny
orange-coloured sachet such as women carry in the bosom.  It was
full of some faintly-scented powder, and bore on one side the
initial 'E,' worked in white silk; and was altogether a dainty
little toy, such as women love.

Doubtless Madame de Cocheforet had dropped it in the night.  I
turned it over and over; and then I put it in my pouch with a
smile, thinking that it might be useful sometime, and in some
way.  I had scarcely done this, and turned with the intention of
exploring the street, when the door behind me creaked on its
leather hinges, and in a moment the host stood at my elbow, and
gave me a surly greeting.

Evidently his suspicions were again aroused, for from this time
he managed to be with me, on one pretence or another until noon.
Moreover, his manner grew each moment more churlish, his hints
plainer; until I could scarcely avoid noticing the one or the
other.  About mid-day, having followed me for the twentieth time
into the street, he came to the point by asking me rudely if I
did not need my horse.

'No,' I said.  'Why do you ask?'

'Because,' he answered, with an ugly smile, 'this is not a very
healthy place for strangers.'

'Ah!'  I retorted.  'But the border air suits me, you see,'

It was a lucky answer, for, taken with my talk the night before,
it puzzled him, by suggesting that I was on the losing side, and
had my reasons for lying near Spain.  Before he had done
scratching his head over it, the clatter of hoofs broke the
sleepy quiet of the village street, and the lady I had seen the
night before rode quickly round the corner, and drew her horse on
to its haunches.  Without looking at me, she called to the
innkeeper to come to her stirrup.

He went.  The moment his back was turned, I slipped away, and in
a twinkling was hidden by a house.  Two or three glum-looking
fellows stared at me as I passed down the street, but no one
moved; and in two minutes I was clear of the village, and in a
half-worn track which ran through the wood, and led--if my ideas
were right--to the Chateau.  To discover the house and learn all
that was to be learned about its situation were my most pressing
needs; and these, even at the risk of a knife thrust, I was
determined to satisfy.

I had not gone two hundred paces along the path, however, before
I heard the tread of a horse behind me, and I had just time to
hide myself before Madame came up and rode by me, sitting her
horse gracefully, and with all the courage of a northern woman.
I watched her pass, and then, assured by her presence that I was
in the right road, I hurried after her.  Two minutes walking at
speed brought me to a light wooden bridge spanning a stream.  I
crossed this, and, as the wood opened, saw before me first a
wide, pleasant meadow, and beyond this a terrace.  On the
terrace, pressed upon on three sides by thick woods, stood a grey
mansion, with the corner tourelles, steep, high roofs, and round
balconies, that men loved and built in the days of the first
Francis.

It was of good size, but wore a gloomy aspect.  A great yew
hedge, which seemed to enclose a walk or bowling-green, hid the
ground floor of the east wing from view, while a formal rose
garden, stiff even in neglect, lay in front of the main building.
The west wing, of which the lower roofs fell gradually away to
the woods, probably contained the stables and granaries.

I stood a moment only, but I marked all, and noted how the road
reached the house, and which windows were open to attack; then I
turned and hastened back.  Fortunately, I met no one between the
house and the village, and was able to enter my host's with an
air of the most complete innocence.

Short as had been my absence, however, I found things altered
there.  Round the door lounged three strangers--stout, well-armed
fellows, whose bearing, as they loitered and chattered, suggested
a curious mixture of smugness and independence.  Half a dozen
pack-horses stood tethered to the post in front of the house; and
the landlord's manner, from being rude and churlish only, had
grown perplexed and almost timid.  One of the strangers, I soon
found, supplied him with wine; the others were travelling
merchants, who rode in the first one's company for the sake of
safety.  All were substantial men from Tarbes--solid burgesses;
and I was not long in guessing that my host, fearing what might
leak out before them, and, particularly, that I might refer to
the previous night's disturbance, was on tenter-hooks while they
remained.

For a time this did not suggest anything to me.  But when we had
all taken our seats for supper, there came an addition to the
party.  The door opened, and the fellow whom I had seen the night
before with Madame de Cocheforet entered and took a stool by the
fire.  I felt sure that he was one of the servants at the
Chateau; and in a flash his presence inspired me with the most
feasible plan for obtaining admission which I had yet hit upon.
I felt myself grow hot at the thought--it seemed so full of
promise, yet so doubtful--and, on the instant, without giving
myself time to think too much, I began to carry it into effect.

I called for two or three bottles of better wine, and, assuming a
jovial air, passed it round the table.  When we had drunk a few
glasses I fell to talking, and, choosing politics, took the side
of the Languedoc party and the malcontents in so reckless a
fashion that the innkeeper was beside himself at my imprudence.
The merchants, who belonged to the class with whom the Cardinal
was always most popular, looked first astonished and then
enraged.  But I was not to be checked; hints and sour looks were
lost upon me.  I grew more outspoken with every glass, I drank to
the Rochellois, I swore it would not be long before they raised
their heads again; and, at last, while the innkeeper and his wife
were engaged lighting the lamp, I passed round the bottle and
called on all for a toast.

'I'll give you one to begin,' I bragged noisily.  'A gentleman's
toast!  A southern toast!  Here is confusion to the Cardinal, and
a health to all who hate him!'

'MON DIEU!'  one of the strangers cried, springing from his seat
in a rage.  'I am not going to stomach that!  Is your house a
common treason-hole,' he continued, turning furiously on the
landlord, 'that you suffer this?'

'Hoity-toity!'  I answered, coolly keeping my seat.  'What is all
this?  Don't you relish my toast, little man?'

'No--nor you!'  he retorted hotly; 'whoever you may be!'

'Then I will give you another,' I answered, with a hiccough.
'Perhaps it will be more to your taste.  Here is the Duke of
Orleans, and may he soon be King!'



CHAPTER III

THE HOUSE IN THE WOOD

Words so reckless fairly shook the three men out of their anger.
For a moment they glared at me as if they had seen a ghost.  Then
the wine merchant clapped his hand on the table.

'That is enough,' he said, with a look at his companions.  'I
think that there can be no mistake about that.  As damnable
treason as ever I heard whispered!  I congratulate you, sir, on
your boldness.  As for you,' he continued, turning with an ugly
sneer to the landlord, 'I shall know now the company you keep!  I
was not aware that my wine wet whistles to such a tune!'

But if he was startled, the innkeeper was furious, seeing his
character thus taken away; and, being at no time a man of many
words, he vented his rage exactly in the way I wished, raising in
a twinkling such an uproar as can scarcely be conceived.  With a
roar like a bull's, he ran headlong at the table, and overturned
it on the top of me.  Fortunately the woman saved the lamp, and
fled with it into a corner, whence she and the man from the
Chateau watched the skirmish in silence; but the pewter cups and
platters flew spinning across the floor, while the table pinned
me to the ground among the ruins of my stool.  Having me at this
disadvantage--for at first I made no resistance the landlord
began to belabour me with the first thing he snatched up, and
when I tried to defend myself, cursed me with each blow for a
treacherous rogue and a vagrant.  Meanwhile the three merchants,
delighted with the turn things had taken, skipped round us
laughing, and now hounded him on, now bantered me with 'how is
that for the Duke of Orleans?'  and 'How now, traitor?'

When I thought that this had lasted long enough--or, to speak
more plainly, when I could stand the innkeeper's drubbing no
longer--I threw him off, and struggled to my feet; but still,
though the blood was trickling down my face, I refrained from
drawing my sword.  I caught up instead a leg of the stool which
lay handy, and, watching my opportunity, dealt the landlord a
shrewd blow under the ear, which laid him out in a moment on the
wreck of his own table.

'Now,' I cried, brandishing my new weapon, which fitted the hand
to a nicety, 'come on!  Come on!  if you dare to strike a blow,
you peddling, truckling, huckstering knaves!  A fig for you and
your shaveling Cardinal!'

The red-faced wine merchant drew his sword in a one-two.

'Why, you drunken fool,' he said wrathfully, 'put that stick
down, or I will spit you like a lark!'

'Lark in your teeth!'  I cried, staggering as if the wine were in
my head.  'And cuckoo, too!  Another word, and I--'

He made a couple of savage passes at me, but in a twinkling his
sword flew across the room.

'VOILA!'  I shouted, lurching forward, as if I had luck and not
skill to thank for my victory.  'Now, the next!  Come on, come
on--you white-livered knaves!'  And, pretending a drunken frenzy,
I flung my weapon bodily amongst them, and seizing the nearest,
began to wrestle with him.

In a moment they all threw themselves upon me, and, swearing
copiously, bore me back to the door.  The wine merchant cried
breathlessly to the woman to open it, and in a twinkling they had
me through it, and half-way across the road.  The one thing I
feared was a knife-thrust in the MELEE; but I had to run that
risk, and the men were honest, and, thinking me drunk, indulgent.
In a trice I found myself on my back in the dirt, with my head
humming; and heard the bars of the door fall noisily into their
places.

I got up and went to the door, and, to play out my part, hammered
on it frantically; crying out to them to let me in.  But the
three travellers only jeered at me, and the landlord, coming to
the window, with his head bleeding, shook his fist at me, and
cursed me for a mischief-maker.

Baffled in this, I retired to a log which lay in the road a few
paces from the house, and sat down on it to await events.  With
torn clothes and bleeding face, hatless and covered with dirt, I
was in little better case than my opponent.  It was raining, too,
and the dripping branches swayed over my head.  The wind was in
the south--the coldest quarter.  I began to feel chilled and
dispirited.  If my scheme failed, I had forfeited roof and bed to
no purpose, and placed future progress out of the question.  It
was a critical moment.

But at last that happened for which I had been looking.  The door
swung open a few inches, and a man came noiselessly out; it was
quickly barred behind him.  He stood a moment, waiting on the
threshold and peering into the gloom; and seemed to expect to be
attacked.  Finding himself unmolested, however, and all quiet, he
went off steadily down the street--towards the Chateau.

I let a couple of minutes go by, and then I followed.  I had no
difficulty in hitting on the track at the end of the street, but
when I had once plunged into the wood, I found myself in darkness
so intense that I soon strayed from the path, and fell over
roots, and tore my clothes with thorns, and lost my temper twenty
times before I found the path again.  However, I gained the
bridge at last, and thence caught sight of a light twinkling
before me.  To make for it across the meadow and terrace was an
easy task; yet, when I had reached the door and had hammered upon
it, I was so worn out, and in so sorry a plight that I sank down,
and had little need to play a part, or pretend to be worse than I
was.

For a long time no one answered.  The dark house towering above
me remained silent.  I could hear, mingled with the throbbings of
my heart, the steady croaking of the frogs in a pond near the
stables; but no other sound.  In a frenzy of impatience and
disgust, I stood up again and hammered, kicking with my heels on
the nail-studded door, and crying out desperately,--

'A MOI!  A MOI!'

Then, or a moment later, I heard a remote door opened; footsteps
as of more than one person drew near.  I raised my voice and
cried again,--

'A MOI!'

'Who is there?'  a voice asked.

'A gentleman in distress,' I answered piteously, moving my hands
across the door.  'For God's sake open and let me in.  I am hurt,
and dying of cold.'

'What brings you here?'  the voice asked sharply.  Despite its
tartness, I fancied that it was a woman's.

'Heaven knows!'  I answered desperately.  'I cannot tell.  They
maltreated me at the inn, and threw me into the street.  I
crawled away, and have been wandering in the wood for hours.
Then I saw a light here.'

On that some muttering took place on the other side of the door--
to which I had my ear.  It ended in the bars being lowered.  The
door swung partly open, and a light shone out, dazzling me.  I
tried to shade my eyes with my fingers, and, as did so, fancied I
heard a murmur of pity.  But when I looked in under screen of my
hand, I saw only one person--the man who held the light, and his
aspect was so strange, so terrifying, that, shaken as I was by
fatigue, I recoiled a step.

He was a tall and very thin man, meanly dressed in a short,
scanty jacket and well-darned hose.  Unable, for some reason, to
bend his neck, he carried his head with a strange stiffness.

And that head--never did living man show a face so like death.
His forehead was bald and yellow, his cheek-bones stood out under
the strained skin, all the lower part of his face fell in, his
jaws receded, his cheeks were hollow, his lips and chin were thin
and fleshless.  He seemed to have only one expression--a fixed
grin.

While I stood looking at this formidable creature, he made a
quick movement to shut the door again, smiling more widely.  I
had the presence of mind to thrust in my foot, and, before he
could resent the act, a voice in the background cried,--

'For shame, Clon!  Stand back, stand back!  do you hear?  I am
afraid, Monsieur, that you are hurt.'

Those words were my welcome to that house; and, spoken at an hour
and in circumstances so gloomy, they made a lasting impression.
Round the hall ran a gallery, and this, the height of the
apartment, and the dark panelling seemed to swallow up the light.
I stood within the entrance (as it seemed to me) of a huge cave;
the skull-headed porter had the air of an ogre.  Only the voice
which greeted me dispelled the illusion.  I turned trembling
towards the quarter whence it came, and, shading my eyes, made
out a woman's form standing in a doorway under the gallery.  A
second figure, which I took to be that of the servant I had seen
at the inn, loomed uncertainly beside her.

I bowed in silence.  My teeth were chattering.  I was faint
without feigning, and felt a kind of terror, hard to explain, at
the sound of this woman's voice.

'One of our people has told me about you, she continued, speaking
out of the darkness.  'I am sorry that this has happened to you
here, but I am afraid that you were indiscreet.'

'I take all the blame, Madame,' I answered humbly.  'I ask only
shelter for the night.'

'The time has not yet come when we cannot give our friends that!'
she answered with noble courtesy.  'When it does, Monsieur, we
shall be homeless ourselves.'

I shivered, looking anywhere but at her; for, if the truth be
told, I had not sufficiently pictured this scene of my arrival--I
had not foredrawn its details; and now I took part in it I felt a
miserable meanness weigh me down.  I had never from the first
liked the work, but I had had no choice, and I had no choice now.
Luckily, the guise in which I came, my fatigue, and wound were a
sufficient mask, or I should have incurred suspicion at once.
For I am sure that if ever in this world a brave man wore a hang-
dog air, or Gil de Berault fell below himself, it was then and
there--on Madame de Cocheforet's threshold, with her welcome
sounding in my ears.

One, I think, did suspect me.  Clon, the porter, continued to
hold the door obstinately ajar and to eye me with grinning spite,
until his mistress, with some sharpness, bade him drop the bars
and conduct me to a room.

'Do you go also, Louis,' she continued, speaking to the man
beside her, 'and see this gentleman comfortably disposed.  I am
sorry,' she added, addressing me in the graceful tone she had
before used, and I thought that I could see her head bend in the
darkness, 'that our present circumstances do not permit us to
welcome you more fitly, Monsieur.  But the troubles of the times
--however, you will excuse what is lacking.  Until to-morrow, I
have the honour to bid you good-night.'

'Good-night, Madame,' I stammered, trembling.  I had not been
able to distinguish her face in the gloom of the doorway, but her
voice, her greeting, her presence unmanned me.  I was troubled
and perplexed; I had not spirit to kick a dog.  I followed the
two servants from the hall without heeding how we went; nor was
it until we came to a full stop at a door in a white-washed
corridor, and it was forced upon me that something was in
question between my two conductors that I began to take notice.

Then I saw that one of them, Louis, wished to lodge me here where
we stood.  The porter, on the other hand, who held the keys,
would not.  He did not speak a word, nor did the other--and this
gave a queer ominous character to the debate; but he continued to
jerk his head towards the farther end of the corridor; and, at
last, he carried his point.  Louis shrugged his shoulders, and
moved on, glancing askance at me; and I, not understanding the
matter in debate, followed the pair in silence.

We reached the end of the corridor, and there for an instant the
monster with the keys paused and grinned at me.  Then he turned
into a narrow passage on the left, and after following it for
some paces, halted before a small, strong door.  His key jarred
in the lock, but he forced it shrieking round, and with a savage
flourish threw the door open.

I walked in and saw a mean, bare chamber with barred windows.
The floor was indifferently clean, there was no furniture.  The
yellow light of the lanthorn falling on the stained walls gave
the place the look of a dungeon.  I turned to the two men.  'This
is not a very good room,' I said.  'And it feels damp.  Have you
no other?'

Louis looked doubtfully at his companion.  But the porter shook
his head stubbornly.

'Why does he not speak?'  I asked with impatience.

'He is dumb,' Louis answered.

'Dumb!'  I exclaimed.  'But he hears.'

'He has ears,' the servant answered drily.  'But he has no
tongue, Monsieur.'

I shuddered.  'How did he lose it?'  I asked.

'At Rochelle.  He was a spy, and the king's people took him the
day the town surrendered.  They spared his life, but cut out his
tongue.'

'Ah!'  I said.  I wished to say more, to be natural, to show
myself at my ease.  But the porter's eyes seemed to burn into me,
and my own tongue clave to the roof of my mouth.  He opened his
lips and pointed to his throat with a horrid gesture, and I shook
my head and turned from him--'You can let me have some bedding?'
I murmured hastily, for the sake of saying something, and to
escape.

'Of course, Monsieur,' Louis answered.  'I will fetch some.'

He went away, thinking doubtless that Clon would stay with me.
But after waiting a minute the porter strode off also with the
lanthorn, leaving me to stand in the middle of the damp, dark
room and reflect on the position.  It was plain that Clon
suspected me.  This prison-like room, with its barred window, at
the back of the house, and in the wing farthest from the stables,
proved so much.  Clearly, he was a dangerous fellow, of whom I
must beware.  I had just begun to wonder how Madame could keep
such a monster in her house, when I heard his step returning.  He
came in, lighting Louis, who carried a small pallet and a bundle
of coverings.

The dumb man had, besides the lanthorn, a bowl of water and a
piece of rag in his hand.  He set them down, and going out again,
fetched in a stool.  Then he hung up the lanthorn on a nail, took
the bowl and rag, and invited me to sit down.

I was loth to let him touch me; but he continued to stand over
me, pointing and grinning with dark persistence, and rather than
stand on a trifle I sat down at last and gave him his way.  He
bathed my head carefully enough, and I daresay did it good; but
I understood.  I knew that his only desire was to learn whether
the cut was real or a pretence, and I began to fear him more and
more; until he was gone from the room, I dared scarcely lift my
face lest he should read too much in it.

Alone, even, I felt uncomfortable, this seemed so sinister a
business, and so ill begun.  I was in the house.  But Madame's
frank voice haunted me, and the dumb man's eyes, full of
suspicion and menace.  When I presently got up and tried my door,
I found it locked.  The room smelt dank and close--like a vault.
I could not see through the barred window, but I could hear the
boughs sweep it in ghostly fashion; and I guessed that it looked
out where the wood grew close to the walls of the house, and that
even in the day the sun never peeped through it.

Nevertheless, tired and worn out, I slept at last.  When I awoke
the room was full of grey light, the door stood open, and Louis,
looking ashamed of himself, waited by my pallet with a cup of
wine in his hand, and some bread and fruit on a platter.

'Will Monsieur be good enough to rise?'  he said.  'It is eight
o'clock.'

'Willingly,' I answered tartly.  'Now that the door is unlocked.'

He turned red.  'It was an oversight,' he stammered 'Clon is
accustomed to lock the door, and he did it inadvertently,
forgetting that there was anyone--'

'Inside,' I said drily.

'Precisely, Monsieur.'

'Ah!'  I replied.  'Well, I do not think the oversight would
please Madame de Cocheforet if she heard of it?'

'If Monsieur would have the kindness not to--'

'Mention it, my good fellow?'  answered, looking at him with
meaning as I rose.  'No.  But it must not occur again.'

I saw that this man was not like Clon.  He had the instincts of
the family servant, and freed from the influences of fear and
darkness felt ashamed of his conduct.  While he arranged my
clothes, he looked round the room with an air of distaste, and
muttered once or twice that the furniture of the principal
chambers was packed away.

'M. de Cocheforet is abroad, I think?'  I said as I dressed.

'And likely to remain there,' the man answered carelessly,
shrugging his shoulders.  'Monsieur will doubtless have heard
that he is in trouble.  In the meantime, the house is TRISTE, and
Monsieur must overlook much, if he stays.  Madame lives retired,
and the roads are ill-made and visitors few.'

'When the lion was ill the jackals left him,' I said.

Louis nodded.  'It is true,' he answered simply.  He made no
boast or brag on his own account, I noticed; and it came home to
me that he was a faithful fellow, such as I love.  I questioned
him discreetly, and learned that he and Clon and an older man who
lived over the stables were the only male servants left of a
great household.  Madame, her sister-in-law, and three women
completed the family.

It took me some time to repair my wardrobe, so that I daresay it
was nearly ten when I left my dismal little room.  I found Louis
waiting in the corridor, and he told me that Madame de Cocheforet
and Mademoiselle were in the rose garden, and would be pleased to
receive me.  I nodded, and he guided me through several dim
passages to a parlour with an open door, through which the sun
shone gaily on the floor.  Cheered by the morning air and this
sudden change to pleasantness and life, I stepped lightly out.

The two ladies were walking up and down a wide path which
bisected the garden.  The weeds grew rankly in the gravel
underfoot, the rose bushes which bordered the walk thrust their
branches here and there in untrained freedom, a dark yew hedge
which formed the background bristled with rough shoots and sadly
needed trimming.  But I did not see any of these things.  The
grace, the noble air, the distinction of the two women who paced
slowly to meet me--and who shared all these qualities, greatly as
they differed in others--left me no power to notice trifles.

Mademoiselle was a head shorter than her BELLE-SOEUR--a slender
woman and petite, with a beautiful face and a fair complexion; a
woman wholly womanly.  She walked with dignity, but beside
Madame's stately figure she had an air almost childish.  And it
was characteristic of the two that Mademoiselle as they drew near
to me regarded me with sorrowful attention, Madame with a grave
smile.

I bowed low.  They returned the salute.  'This is my sister,'
Madame de Cocheforet said, with a very slight air of
condescension, 'Will you please to tell me your name, Monsieur?'

'I am M. de Barthe, a gentleman of Normandy,' I said, taking on
impulse the name of my mother.  My own, by a possibility, might
be known.

Madame's face wore a puzzled look.  'I do not know that name, I
think,' she said thoughtfully.  Doubtless she was going over in
her mind all the names with which conspiracy had made her
familiar.

That is my misfortune, Madame,' I said humbly.

'Nevertheless I am going to scold you,' she rejoined, still
eyeing me with some keenness.  'I am glad to see that you are
none the worse for your adventure--but others may be.  And you
should have borne that in mind, sir.'

'I do not think that I hurt the man seriously,' I stammered.

'I do not refer to that,' she answered coldly.  'You know, or
should know, that we are in disgrace here; that the Government
regards us already with an evil eye, and that a very small thing
would lead them to garrison the village, and perhaps oust us from
the little the wars have left us.  You should have known this,
and considered it,' she continued.  'Whereas--I do not say that
you are a braggart, M. de Barthe.  But on this one occasion you
seem to have played the part of one.'

'Madame, I did not think,' I stammered.

'Want of thought causes much evil,' she answered, smiling.
'However, I have spoken, and we trust that while you stay with us
you will be more careful.  For the rest, Monsieur,' she continued
graciously, raising her hand to prevent me speaking, 'we do not
know why you are here, or what plans you are pursuing.  And we do
not wish to know.  It is enough that you are of our side.  This
house is at your service as long as you please to use it.  And if
we can aid you in any other way we will do so.'

'Madame!'  I exclaimed; and there I stopped.  I could say no
more. The rose garden, with its air of neglect, the shadow of the
quiet house that fell across it, the great yew hedge which backed
it, and was the pattern of one under which I had played in
childhood--all had points that pricked me.  But the women's
kindness, their unquestioning confidence, the noble air of
hospitality which moved them!  Against these and their placid
beauty in its peaceful frame I had no shield, no defence.  I
turned away, and feigned to be overcome by gratitude.

'I have no words--to thank you!'  I muttered presently.  'I am a
little shaken this morning.  I--pardon me.'

'We will leave you for a while,' Mademoiselle de Cocheforet said
in gentle pitying tones.  'The air will revive you.  Louis shall
call you when we go to dinner, M. de Barthe.  Come, Elise.'

I bowed low to hide my face, and they nodded pleasantly--not
looking closely at me--as they walked by me to the house.  I
watched the two gracious, pale-robed figures until the doorway
swallowed them, and then I walked away to a quiet corner where
the shrubs grew highest and the yew hedge threw its deepest
shadow, and I stood to think.

And, MON DIEU, strange thoughts.  If the oak can think at the
moment the wind uproots it, or the gnarled thorn-bush when the
landslip tears it from the slope, they may have such thoughts, I
stared at the leaves, at the rotting blossoms, into the dark
cavities of the hedge; I stared mechanically, dazed and
wondering.  What was the purpose for which I was here?  What was
the work I had come to do?  Above all, how--my God!  how was I to
do it in the face of these helpless women, who trusted me, who
believed in me, who opened their house to me?  Clon had not
frightened me, nor the loneliness of the leagued village, nor the
remoteness of this corner where the dread Cardinal seemed a name,
and the King's writ ran slowly, and the rebellion long quenched
elsewhere, still smouldered.  But Madame's pure faith, the
younger woman's tenderness--how was I to face these?

I cursed the Cardinal--would he had stayed at Luchon.  I cursed
the English fool who had brought me to this, I cursed the years
of plenty and scarceness, and the Quartier Marais, and Zaton's,
where I had lived like a pig, and--

A touch fell on my arm.  I turned.  It was Clon.  How he had
stolen up so quietly, how long he had been at my elbow, I could
not tell.  But his eyes gleamed spitefully in their deep sockets,
and he laughed with his fleshless lips; and I hated him.  In the
daylight the man looked more like a death's-head than ever.  I
fancied that I read in his face that he knew my secret, and I
flashed into rage at sight of him.

'What is it?'  I cried, with another oath.  'Don't lay your
corpse-claws on me!'

He mowed at me, and, bowing with ironical politeness, pointed to
the house.

'Is Madame served?'  I said impatiently, crushing down my anger.
'Is that what you mean, fool?'

He nodded,

'Very well,' I retorted.  'I can find my way then.  You may go!'

He fell behind, and I strode back through the sunshine and
flowers, and along the grass-grown paths, to the door by which I
had come I walked fast, but his shadow kept pace with me, driving
out the unaccustomed thoughts in which I had been indulging.
Slowly but surely it darkened my mood.  After all, this was a
little, little place; the people who lived here--I shrugged my
shoulders.  France, power, pleasure, life, everything worth
winning, worth having, lay yonder in the great city.  A boy might
wreck himself here for a fancy; a man of the world, never.  When
I entered the room, where the two ladies stood waiting for me by
the table, I was nearly my old self again.  And a chance word
presently completed the work.

'Clon made you understand, then?'  the young woman said kindly,
as I took my seat.

'Yes, Mademoiselle,' I answered.  On that I saw the two smile at
one another, and I added:  'He is a strange creature.  I wonder
that you can bear to have him near you.'

'Poor man!  You do not know his story?'  Madame said.

'I have heard something of it,' I answered.  'Louis told me.'

'Well, I do shudder at him sometimes,' she replied, in a low
voice.  'He has suffered--and horribly, and for us.  But I wish
that it had been on any other service.  Spies are necessary
things, but one does not wish to have to do with them!  Anything
in the nature of treachery is so horrible.'

'Quick, Louis!'  Mademoiselle exclaimed, 'the cognac, if you have
any there!  I am sure that you are--still feeling ill, Monsieur.'

'No, I thank you,' I muttered hoarsely, making an effort to
recover myself.  'I am quite well.  It was--an old wound that
sometimes touches me.'



CHAPTER IV

MADAME AND MADEMOISELLE

To be frank, however, it was not the old wound that touched me so
nearly, but Madame's words; which, finishing what Clon's sudden
appearance in the garden had begun, went a long way towards
hardening me and throwing me back into myself.  I saw with
bitterness--what I had perhaps forgotten for a moment--how great
was the chasm that separated me from these women; how impossible
it was that we could long think alike; how far apart in views, in
experience, in aims we were.  And while I made a mock in my heart
of their high-flown sentiments--or thought I did--I laughed no
less at the folly which had led me to dream, even for a, moment,
that I could, at my age, go back--go back and risk all for a
whim, a scruple, the fancy of a lonely hour.

I daresay something of this showed in my face; for Madame's eyes
mirrored a dim reflection of trouble as she looked at me, and
Mademoiselle talked nervously and at random.  At any rate, I
fancied so, and I hastened to compose myself; and the two, in
pressing upon me the simple dainties of the table soon forgot, or
appeared to forget, the incident.

Yet in spite of this CONTRETEMPS, that first meal had a strange
charm for me.  The round table whereat we dined was spread inside
the open door which led to the garden, so that the October
sunshine fell full on the spotless linen and quaint old plate,
and the fresh balmy air filled the room with the scent of sweet
herbs.  Louis served us with the mien of a major-domo, and set on
each dish as though it had been a peacock or a mess of ortolans.
The woods provided the larger portion of our meal; the garden did
its part; the confections Mademoiselle had cooked with her own
hand.

By-and-by, as the meal went on, as Louis trod to and fro across
the polished floor, and the last insects of summer hummed
sleepily outside, and the two gracious faces continued to smile
at me out of the gloom--for the ladies sat with their backs to
the door--I began to dream again, I began to sink again into
folly, that was half-pleasure, half-pain.  The fury of the
gaming-house and the riot of Zaton's seemed far away.  The
triumphs of the fencing-room--even they grew cheap and tawdry.  I
thought of existence as one outside it, I balanced this against
that, and wondered whether, after all, the red soutane were so
much better than the homely jerkin, or the fame of a day than
ease and safety.

And life at Cocheforet was all after the pattern of this dinner.
Each day, I might almost say each meal, gave rise to the same
sequence of thoughts.  In Clon's presence, or when some word of
Madame's, unconsciously harsh, reminded me of the distance
between us, I was myself.  At other times, in face of this
peaceful and intimate life, which was only rendered possible by
the remoteness of the place and the peculiar circumstances in
which the ladies stood, I felt a strange weakness, The loneliness
of the woods that encircled the house, and only here and there
afforded a distant glimpse of snow-clad peaks; the absence of any
link to bind me to the old life, so that at intervals it seemed
unreal; the remoteness of the great world, all tended to sap my
will and weaken the purpose which had brought me to this place.

On the fourth day after my coming, however, something happened to
break the spell.  It chanced that I came late to dinner, and
entered the room hastily and without ceremony, expecting to find
Madame and her sister already seated.  Instead, I found them
talking in a low tone by the open door, with every mark of
disorder in their appearance; while Clon and Louis stood at a
little distance with downcast faces and perplexed looks.

I had time to see all this, and then my entrance wrought a sudden
change.  Clon and Louis sprang to attention; Madame and her
sister came to the table and sat down, and all made a shallow
pretence of being at their ease.  But Mademoiselle's face was
pale, her hand trembled; and though Madame's greater self-command
enabled her to carry off the matter better, I saw that she was
not herself.  Once or twice she spoke harshly to Louis; she fell
at other times into a brown study; and when she thought that I
was not watching her, her face wore a look of deep anxiety.

I wondered what all this meant; and I wondered more when, after
the meal, the two walked in the garden for an hour with Clon.
Mademoiselle came from this interview alone, and I was sure that
she had been weeping.  Madame and the dark porter stayed outside
some time longer; then she, too, came in, and disappeared.

Clon did not return with her, and when I went into the garden
five minutes later, Louis also had vanished.  Save for two women
who sat sewing at an upper window, the house seemed to be
deserted.  Not a sound broke the afternoon stillness of room or
garden, and yet I felt that more was happening in this silence
than appeared on the surface.  I begin to grow curious--
suspicious, and presently slipped out myself by way of the
stables, and skirting the wood at the back of the house, gained
with a little trouble the bridge which crossed the stream and led
to the village.

Turning round at this point I could see the house, and I moved a
little aside into the underwood, and stood gazing at the windows,
trying to unriddle the matter.  It was not likely that M. de
Cocheforet would repeat his visit so soon; and, besides, the
women's emotions had been those of pure dismay and grief, unmixed
with any of the satisfaction to which such a meeting, though
snatched by stealth, must give rise.  I discarded my first
thought therefore--that he had returned unexpectedly--and I
sought for another solution.

But no other was on the instant forthcoming.  The windows
remained obstinately blind, no figures appeared on the terrace,
the garden lay deserted, and without life.  My departure had not,
as I half expected it would, drawn the secret into light.

I watched awhile, at times cursing my own meanness; but the
excitement of the moment and the quest tided me over that.  Then
I determined to go down into the village and see whether anything
was moving there.  I had been down to the inn once, and had been
received half sulkily, half courteously, as a person privileged
at the great house, and therefore to be accepted.  It would not
be thought odd if I went again, and after a moment's thought, I
started down the track.

This, where it ran through the wood, was so densely shaded that
the sun penetrated to it little, and in patches only.  A squirrel
stirred at times, sliding round a trunk, or scampering across the
dry leaves.  Occasionally a pig grunted and moved farther into
the wood.  But the place was very quiet, and I do not know how it
was that I surprised Clon instead of being surprised by him.

He was walking along the path before me with his eyes on the
ground--walking so slowly, and with his lean frame so bent that I
might have supposed him ill if I had not remarked the steady
movement of his head from right to left, and the alert touch with
which he now and again displaced a clod of earth or a cluster of
leaves.  By-and-by he rose stiffly, and looked round him
suspiciously; but by that time I had slipped behind a trunk, and
was not to be seen; and after a brief interval he went back to
his task, stooping over it more closely, if possible, than
before, and applying himself with even greater care.

By that time I had made up my mind that he was tracking someone.
But whom?  I could not make a guess at that.  I only knew that
the plot was thickening, and began to feel the eagerness of the
chase.  Of course, if the matter had not to do with Cocheforet,
it was no affair of mine; but though it seemed unlikely that
anything could bring him back so soon, he might still be at the
bottom of this.  And, besides, I felt a natural curiosity.  When
Clon at last improved his pace, and went on to the village, I
took up his task.  I called to mind all the wood-lore I had ever
learned, and scanned trodden mould and crushed leaves with eager
eyes.  But in vain.  I could make nothing of it all, and rose at
last with an aching back and no advantage.

I did not go on to the village after that, but returned to the
house, where I found Madame pacing the garden.  She looked up
eagerly on hearing my step; and I was mistaken if she was not
disappointed--if she had not been expecting someone else.  She
hid the feeling bravely, however, and met me with a careless
word; but she turned to the house more than once while we talked,
and she seemed to be all the while on the watch, and uneasy.  I
was not surprised when Clon's figure presently appeared in the
doorway, and she left me abruptly, and went to him.  I only felt
more certain than before that there was something strange on
foot.  What it was, and whether it had to do with M. de
Cocheforet, I could not tell.  But there it was, and I grew more
curious the longer I remained alone.

She came back to me presently, looking thoughtful and a trifle
downcast.

'That was Clon, was it not?'  I said, studying her face,

'Yes,' she answered.  She spoke absently, and did not look at me.

'How does he talk to you?'  I asked, speaking a trifle curtly.

As I intended, my tone roused her.  'By signs,' she said.

'Is he--is he not a little mad?" I ventured.  I wanted to make
her talk and forget herself.

She looked at me with sudden keenness, then dropped her eyes,

'You do not like him?'  she said, a note of challenge in her
voice.  'I have noticed that, Monsieur.'

'I think he does not like me,' I replied.

'He is less trustful than we are,' she answered naively.  'It is
natural that he should be.  He has seen more of the world.'

That silenced me for a moment, but she did not seem to notice it.

'I was looking for him a little while ago, and I could not find
him,' I said, after a pause

'He has been into the village,' she answered.

I longed to pursue the matter further; but though she seemed to
entertain no suspicion of me, I dared not run the risk.  I tried
her, instead, on another tack.

'Mademoiselle de Cocheforet does not seem very well to-day?'  I
said.

'No?'  she answered carelessly.  'Well, now you speak of it, I do
not think that she is.  She is often anxious about--one we love.'

She uttered the last words with a little hesitation, and looked
at me quickly when she had spoken them.  We were sitting at the
moment on a stone seat which had the wall of the house for a
back; and, fortunately, I was toying with the branch of a
creeping plant that hung over it, so that she could not see more
than the side of my face.  For I knew that it altered.  Over my
voice, however, I had more control, and I hastened to answer,
'Yes, I suppose so,' as innocently as possible.

'He is at Bosost, in Spain.  You knew that, I conclude?'  she
said, with a certain sharpness.  And she looked me in the face
again very directly.

'Yes,' I answered, beginning to tremble.

'I suppose you have heard, too, that he--that he sometimes
crosses the border?'  she continued in a low voice, but with a
certain ring of insistence in her tone.  'Or, if you have not
heard it, you guess it?'

I was in a quandary, and grew, in one second, hot all over.
Uncertain what amount of knowledge I ought to admit, I took
refuge in gallantry.

'I should be surprised if he did not,' I answered, with a bow,
'being, as he is, so close, and having such an inducement to
return, Madame.'

She drew a long, shivering sigh, at the thought of his peril, I
fancied, and she sat back against the wall.  Nor did she say any
more, though I heard her sigh again.  Is a moment she rose.

'The afternoons are growing chilly,' she said; 'I will go in and
see how Mademoiselle is.  Sometimes she does not come to supper.
If she cannot descend this evening, I am afraid that you must
excuse me too, Monsieur.'

I said what was right, and watched her go in; and, as I did so, I
loathed my errand, and the mean contemptible curiosity which it
had planted in my mind, more than at any former time.  These
women--I could find it in my heart to hate them for their
frankness, for their foolish confidence, and the silly
trustfulness that made them so easy a prey!

NOM DE DIEU!  What did the woman mean by telling me all this?  To
meet me in such a way, to disarm one by such methods, was to take
an unfair advantage.  It put a vile--ay, the vilest--aspect, on
the work I had to do.

Yet it was very odd!  What could M. de Cocheforet mean by
returning so soon, if M. de Cocheforet was here?  And, on the
other hand, if it was not his unexpected presence that had so
upset the house, what was the secret?  Whom had Clon been
tracking?  And what was the cause of Madame's anxiety?  In a few
minutes I began to grow curious again; and, as the ladies did not
appear at supper, I had leisure to give my brain full licence,
and, in the course of an hour, thought of a hundred keys to the
mystery.  But none exactly fitted the lock, or laid open the
secret.

A false alarm that evening helped to puzzle me still more.  I was
sitting about an hour after supper, on the same seat in the
garden--I had my cloak and was smoking--when Madame came out like
a ghost, and, without seeing me, flitted away through the
darkness toward the stables.  For a moment I hesitated, and then
I followed her.  She went down the path and round the stables,
and, so far, I saw nothing strange in her actions; but when she
had in this way gained the rear of the west wing, she took a
track through the thicket to the east of the house again, and so
came back to the garden.  This gained, she came up the path and
went in through the parlour door, and disappeared--alter making a
clear circuit of the house, and not once pausing or looking to
right or left!  I confess I was fairly baffled.  I sank back on
the seat I had left, and said to myself that this was the lamest
of all conclusions.  I was sure that she had exchanged no word
with anyone.  I was equally sure that she had not detected my
presence behind her.  Why, then, had she made this strange
promenade, alone, unprotected, an hour after nightfall?  No dog
had bayed, no one had moved, she had not once paused, or
listened, like a person expecting a rencontre.  I could not make
it out.  And I came no nearer to solving it, though I lay awake
an hour beyond my usual time.

In the morning, neither of the ladies descended to dinner, and I
heard that Mademoiselle was not so well.  After a lonely meal,
therefore I missed them more than I should have supposed--I
retired to my favourite seat and fell to meditating.

The day was fine, and the garden pleasant.  Sitting there with my
eyes on the old fashioned herb-beds, with the old-fashioned
scents in the air, and the dark belt of trees bounding the view
on either side, I could believe that I had been out of Paris not
three weeks, but three months.  The quiet lapped me round.  I
could fancy that I had never loved anything else.  The wood-doves
cooed in the stillness; occasionally the harsh cry of a jay
jarred the silence.  It was an hour after noon, and hot.  I think
I nodded.

On a sudden, as if in a dream, I saw Clon's face peering at me
round the angle of the parlour door.  He looked, and in a moment
withdrew, and I heard whispering.  The door was gently closed.
Then all was still again.

But I was wide awake now, and thinking.  Clearly the people of
the house wished to assure themselves that I was asleep and
safely out of the way.  As clearly, it was to my interest to be
in the way.  Giving place to the temptation, I rose quietly, and,
stooping below the level of the windows, slipped round the east
end of the house, passing between it and the great yew hedge.
Here I found all still and no one stirring; so, keeping a wary
eye about me, I went on round the house--reversing the route
which Madame had taken the night before--until I gained the rear
of the stables.  Here I had scarcely paused a second to scan the
ground before two persons came out of the stable-court.  They
were Madame and the porter.

They stood a brief while outside and looked up and down.  Then
Madame said something to the man, and he nodded.  Leaving him
standing where he was, she crossed the grass with a quick, light
step, and vanished among the trees.

In a moment my mind was made up to follow; and, as Clon turned at
once and went in, I was able to do so before it was too late.
Bending low among the shrubs, I ran hotfoot to the point where
Madame had entered the wood.  Here I found a narrow path, and ran
nimbly along it, and presently saw her grey robe fluttering among
the trees before me.  It only remained to keep out of her sight
and give her no chance of discovering that she was followed; and
this I set myself to do.  Once or twice she glanced round, but
the wood was of beech, the light which passed between the leaves
was mere twilight, and my clothes were dark-coloured.  I had
every advantage, therefore, and little to fear as long as I could
keep her in view and still remain myself at such a distance that
the rustle of my tread would not disturb her.

Assured that she was on her way to meet her husband, whom my
presence kept from the house, I felt that the crisis had come at
last, and I grew more excited with each step I took.  I detested
the task of watching her; it filled me with peevish disgust.  But
in proportion as I hated it I was eager to have it done and be
done with it, and succeed, and stuff my ears and begone from the
scene.  When she presently came to the verge of the beech wood,
and, entering a little open clearing, seemed to loiter, I went
cautiously.  This, I thought, must be the rendezvous; and I held
back warily, looking to see him step out of the thicket.

But he did not, and by-and-by she quickened her pace.  She
crossed the open and entered a wide ride cut through a low, dense
wood of alder and dwarf oak--a wood so closely planted and so
intertwined with hazel and elder and box that the branches rose
like a solid wall, twelve feet high, on either side of the track.

Down this she passed, and I stood and watched her go, for I dared
not follow.  The ride stretched away as straight as a line for
four or five hundred yards, a green path between green walls.  To
enter it was to be immediately detected, if she turned, while the
thicket itself permitted no passage.  I stood baffled and raging,
and watched her pass along.  It seemed an age before she at last
reached the end, and, turning sharply to the right, was in an
instant gone from sight.

I waited then no longer.  I started off, and, running as lightly
and quietly as I could, I sped down the green alley.  The sun
shone into it, the trees kept off the wind, and between heat and
haste I sweated finely.  But the turf was soft, and the ground
fell slightly, and in little more than a minute I gained the end.
Fifty yards short of the turning I stopped, and, stealing on,
looked cautiously the way she had gone.

I saw before me a second ride, the twin of the other, and a
hundred and fifty paces down it her grey figure tripping on
between the green hedges.  I stood and took breath, and cursed
the wood and the heat and Madame's wariness.  We must have come a
league, or two-thirds of a league, at least.  How far did the man
expect her to plod to meet him?  I began to grow angry.  There is
moderation even in the cooking of eggs, and this wood might
stretch into Spain, for all I knew!

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
hour 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!'  be 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 how and smile
and take dancing lessons?'

'In this case a lesson in politeness were more to the point,
Monsieur,' I said sternly.  And I rose.

'Was it by your orders that this was done?'  he retorted, his
brow black with passion.  Answer, will you?'

'It was!'  I replied outright.

'Then take that!'  he cried, dashing his hat violently in my
face, 'and come outside.'

'With pleasure, Monsieur,' I answered, bowing; 'in one moment.
Permit me to find my sword.  I think that it is in the passage.'

I went thither to get it.

When I returned, I found that the two men were waiting for me in
the garden, while the ladies had risen from the table, and were
standing near it with blanched faces.

'You had better take your sister upstairs, Mademoiselle,' I said
gently, pausing a moment beside them.  'Have no fear.  All will
be well.'

But what is it?'  she answered, looking troubled.  'It was so
sudden.  I am--I did not understand.  You quarrelled so quickly.'

'It is very simple,' I answered, smiling.  'M. le Capitaine
insulted you yesterday; he will pay for it to-day.  That is all.
Or, not quite all,' I continued, dropping my voice and speaking
in a different tone.  'His removal may help you, Mademoiselle.
Do you understand?  I think that there will be no more searching
to-day.'  She uttered an exclamation, grasping my arm and peering
into my face.

'You will kill him?'  she muttered.

I nodded.

'Why not?'  I said.

She caught her breath, and stood with one hand clasped to her
bosom, gazing at me with parted lips, the blood mounting to her
checks.  Gradually the flush melted into a fierce smile.

'Yes, yes, why not?'  she repeated between her teeth.  'Why not?'
She had her hand on my arm, and I felt her fingers tighten until
I could have winced.  'Why not?  So you planned this--for us,
Monsieur?'

I nodded.

'But can you?'

'Safely,' I said; then, muttering to her to take her sister
upstairs, I turned towards the garden.  My foot was already on
the threshold, and I was composing my face to meet the enemy,
when I heard a movement behind me.  The next moment her hand was
on my arm.

'Wait!  Wait a moment!  Come back!'  she panted.  I turned.  The
smile and flush had vanished; her face was pale.  'No!'  she said
abruptly.  'I was wrong!  I, will not have it.  I will have no
part in it!  You planned it last night, M. de Barthe.  It is
murder.'

'Mademoiselle!'  I exclaimed, wondering.  'Murder?  Why?  It is a
duel.'

'It is murder,' she answered persistently.  'You planned it last
night.  You said so.'

'But I risk my own life,' I replied sharply.

'Nevertheless--I will have no part in it,' she answered more
faintly.  She was trembling with agitation.  Her eyes avoided
mine.

'On my shoulders be it then!'  I replied stoutly.  'It is too
late, Mademoiselle, to go back.  They are waiting for me.  Only,
before I go, let me beg of you to retire.'

And I turned from her, and went out, wondering and thinking.
First, that women were strange things.  Secondly--MURDER?  Merely
because I had planned the duel and provoked the quarrel!  Never
had I heard anything so preposterous.  Grant it, and dub every
man who kept his honour with his hands a Cain--and a good many
branded faces would be seen in some streets.  I laughed at the
fancy, as I strode down the garden walk.

And yet, perhaps, I was going to do a foolish thing.  The
Lieutenant would still be here:  a hard-bitten man, of stiffer
stuff than his Captain.  And the troopers.  What if, when I had
killed their leader, they made the place too hot for me,
Monseigneur's commission notwithstanding?  I should look silly,
indeed, if on the eve of success I were driven from the place by
a parcel of jack-boots.

I liked the thought so little that I hesitated.  Yet it seemed
too late to retreat.  The Captain and the Lieutenant were waiting
for me in a little open space fifty yards from the house, where a
narrower path crossed the broad walk, down which I had first seen
Mademoiselle and her sister pacing.  The Captain had removed his
doublet, and stood in his shirt leaning against the sundial, his
head bare and his sinewy throat uncovered.  He had drawn his
rapier and stood pricking the ground impatiently.  I marked his
strong and nervous frame and his sanguine air:  and twenty years
earlier the sight might have damped me.  But no thought of the
kind entered my head now, and though I felt with each moment
greater reluctance to engage, doubt of the issue had no place in
my calculations.

I made ready slowly, and would gladly, to gain time, have found
some fault with the place.  But the sun was sufficiently high to
give no advantage to either.  The ground was good, the spot well
chosen.  I could find no excuse to put off the man, and I was
about to salute him and fall to work when a thought crossed my
mind.

'One moment!'  I said.  'Supposing I kill you, M. le Capitaine,
what becomes of your errand here?'

'Don't trouble yourself;' he answered with a sneer he had misread
my slowness and hesitation.  'It will not happen, Monsieur.  And
in any case the thought need not harass you.  I have a
Lieutenant.'

'Yes, but what of my mission?'  I replied bluntly.  'I have no
lieutenant.'

'You should have thought of that before you interfered with my
boots,' he retorted with contempt.

'True,' I said overlooking his manner.  'But better late than
never.  I am not sure, now I think of it, that my duty to
Monseigneur will let me fight.'

'You will swallow the blow?'  he cried, spitting on the ground
offensively.  'DIABLE!'  And the Lieutenant, standing on one side
with his hands behind him and his shoulders squared, laughed
grimly.

'I have not made up my mind,' I answered irresolutely.

'Well, NOM DE DIEU!  make it up,' the Captain replied, with an
ugly sneer.  He took a swaggering step this way and that, playing
his weapon.  'I am afraid, Lieutenant, that there will be no
sport to-day,' he continued in a loud aside.  'Our cock has but a
chicken heart.'

'Well, I said coolly,'I do not know what to do.  Certainly it is
a fine day, and a fair piece of ground.  And the sun stands well.
But I have not much to gain by killing you, M. le Capitaine, and
it might get me into an awkward fix.  On the other hand, it would
not hurt me to let you go.'

'Indeed!'  he said contemptuously, looking at me as I should look
at a lackey.

'No!'  I replied.  'For if you were to say that you had struck
Gil de Berault and left the ground with a whole skin, no one
would believe you.'

'Gil de Berault!'  he exclaimed frowning.

'Yes, Monsieur,' I replied suavely.  'At your service.  You did
not know my name?'

'I thought that your name was De Barthe,' he said.  His voice
sounded queerly; and he waited for the answer with parted lips,
and a shadow in his eyes which I had seen in men's eyes before.

'No,' I said; 'that was my mother's name.  I took it for this
occasion only.'

His florid cheek lost a shade of its colour, and he bit his lips
as he glanced at the Lieutenant, trouble in his eyes.  I had seen
these signs before, and knew them, and I might have cried
'Chicken-heart!'  in my turn; but I had not made a way of escape
for him--before I declared myself--for nothing, and I held to my
purpose.

'I think you will allow now,' I said grimly, 'that it will not
harm me even if I put up with a blow!'

'M. de Berault's courage is known,' he muttered.

'And with reason,' I said.  'That being so suppose that we say
this day three months, M. le Capitaine?  The postponement to be
for my convenience.'

He caught the Lieutenant's eye and looked down sullenly, the
conflict in his mind as plain as daylight.  He had only to insist
that I must fight; and if by luck or skill he could master me his
fame as a duellist would run, like a ripple over water, through
every garrison town in France and make him a name even in Paris.
On the other side were the imminent peril of death, the gleam of
cold steel already in fancy at his breast, the loss of life and
sunshine, and the possibility of a retreat with honour, if
without glory.  I read his face, and knew before he spoke what he
would do.

'It appears to me that the burden is with you,' he said huskily;
'but for my part I am satisfied.'

'Very well,' I said, 'I take the burden.  Permit me to apologise
for having caused you to strip unnecessarily.  Fortunately the
sun is shining.'

'Yes,' he said gloomily.  And he took his clothes from the
sundial and began to put them on.  He had expressed himself
satisfied, but I knew that he was feeling very ill-satisfied,
indeed, with himself; and I was not surprised when he presently
said abruptly and almost rudely, 'There is one thing that I think
we must settle here.'

'Yes?'  I said.  'What is that?'

'Our positions,' he blurted out, 'Or we shall cross one another
again within the hour.'

'Umph!  I am not quite sure that I understand,' I said.

'That is precisely what I don't do--understand!'  he retorted, in
a tone of surly triumph.  'Before I came on this duty, I was told
that there was a gentleman here, bearing sealed orders from the
Cardinal to arrest M. de Cocheforet; and I was instructed to
avoid collision with him so far as might be possible.  At first I
took you for the gentleman.  But the plague take me if I
understand the matter now.'

'Why not?'  I said coldly.

'Because--well, the question is in a nutshell!'  he answered
impetuously.  'Are you here on behalf of Madame de Cocheforet, to
shield her husband?  Or are you here to arrest him?  That is what
I do not understand, M. de Berault.'

'If you mean, am I the Cardinal's agent--I am!'  I answered
sternly.

'To arrest M. de Cocheforet?'

'To arrest M. de Cocheforet.'

'Well--you surprise me,' he said.

Only that; but he spoke so drily that I felt the blood rush to my
face.

'Take care, Monsieur,' I said severely.  'Do not presume too far
on the inconvenience to which your death might put me.'

He shrugged his shoulders.

'No offence,' he said.  'But you do not seem, M. de Berault, to
comprehend the difficulty.  If we do not settle things now, we
shall be bickering twenty times a day.'

'Well, what do you want?'  I asked impatiently,

'Simply to know how you are going to proceed.  So that our plans
may not clash.'

'But surely, M. le Capitaine, that is my affair,' I said.

'The clashing?'  he answered bitterly.  Then he waved aside my
wrath 'Pardon,' he said, 'the point is simply this.  How do you
propose to find him if he is here?'

'That again is my affair,' I answered.
He threw up his hands in despair; but in a moment his place was
taken by an unexpected disputant.

The Lieutenant, who had stood by all the time, listening and
tugging at his grey moustache, suddenly spoke.

Look here, M. de Berault,' he said, confronting me roughly, 'I do
not fight duels.  I am from the ranks.  I proved my courage at
Montauban in '21, and my honour is good enough to take care of
itself.  So I say what I like, and I ask you plainly what M. le
Capitaine doubtless has in his mind, but does not ask:  Are you
running with the hare, and hunting with the hounds in this
matter?  In other words, have you thrown up Monseigneur's
commission in all but name, and become Madame's ally; or--it is
the only other alternative--are you getting at the man through
the women?'

'You villain!'  I cried, glaring at him in such a rage and fury
that I could scarcely get the words out.  This was plain speaking
with a vengeance!  How dare you?  How dare you say that I am
false to the hand that pays me?'

I thought that he would blench, but he did not.  He stood up
stiff as a poker.

'I do not say; I ask!'  he replied, facing me squarely, and
slapping his fist into his open hand to drive home his words the
better.  'I ask you whether you are playing the traitor to the
Cardinal, or to these two women?  It is a simple question.'

I fairly choked.  'You impudent scoundrel!'  I said.

'Steady, steady!'  he replied.  'Pitch sticks where it belongs,
and nowhere else.  But that is enough.  I see which it is, M. le
Capitaine; this way a moment, by your leave.'

And in a very cavalier fashion he took his officer by the arm,
and drew him into a sidewalk, leaving me to stand in the sun,
bursting with anger and spleen.  The gutter-bred rascal!  That
such a man should insult me, and with impunity!  In Paris, I
might have made him fight, but here it was impossible.

I was still foaming with rage when they returned.

'We have come to a determination,' the Lieutenant said, tugging
his grey moustachios, and standing like a ramrod.  'We shall
leave you the house and Madame, and you can take your own line to
find the man, for ourselves, we shall draw off our men to the
village, and we shall take our line.  That is all, M. le
Capitaine, is it not?'

'I think so,' the Captain muttered, looking anywhere but at me.

'Then we bid you good-day, Monsieur,' the Lieutenant added, and
in a moment he turned his companion round, and the two retired up
the walk to the house, leaving me to look after them in a black
fit of rage and incredulity.

At the first flush, there was something so offensive in the
manner of their going that anger had the upper hand.  I thought
of the Lieutenant's words, and I cursed him to hell with a
sickening consciousness that I should not forget them in a hurry.

'Was I playing the traitor to the Cardinal or to these women--
which?'  MON DIEU!  if ever question--but there, some day I would
punish him.  And the Captain?  I could put an end to his
amusement, at any rate; and I would.  Doubtless among the country
bucks of Auch he lorded it as a chief provincial bully, but I
would cut his comb for him some fine morning behind the barracks.

And then as I grew cooler I began to wonder why they were going,
and what they were going to do.  They might be already on the
track, or have the information they required under hand; in that
case I could understand the movement.  But if they were still
searching vaguely, uncertain whether their quarry were in the
neighbourhood or not, and uncertain how long they might have to
stay, it seemed incredible that soldiers should move from good
quarters to bad without motive.

I wandered down the garden, thinking sullenly of this, and
pettishly cutting off the heads of the flowers with my sheathed
sword.  After all, if they found and arrested the man, what then?
I should have to make my peace with the Cardinal as I best might.
He would have gained his point, but not through me, and I should
have to look to myself.  On the other hand, if I anticipated
them--and, as a fact, I believed that I could lay my hand on the
fugitive within a few hours--there would come a time when I must
face Mademoiselle.

A little while back that had not seemed so difficult a thing.
From the day of our first meeting--and in a higher degree since
that afternoon when she had lashed me with her scorn-my views of
her, and my feelings towards her, had been strangely made up of
antagonism and sympathy; of repulsion, because in her past and
present she was so different from me; of yearning because she was
a woman and friendless.  Later I had duped her and bought her
confidence by returning the jewels, and so in a measure I had
sated my vengeance; then, as a consequence, sympathy had again
got the better of me, until now I hardly knew my own mind, or
what I felt, or what I intended.  I DID NOT KNOW, in fact, what I
intended.  I stood there in the garden with that conviction
suddenly newborn in my mind; and then, in a moment, I heard her
step, and I turned to find her behind me.

Her face was like April, smiles breaking through her tears.  As
she stood with a tall hedge of sunflowers behind her, I started
to see how beautiful she was.

'I am here in search of you, M. de Barthe,' she said, colouring
slightly, perhaps because my eyes betrayed my thought; 'to thank
you.  You have not fought, and yet you have conquered.  My woman
has just been with me, and she tells me that they are going.'

'Going?'  I said, 'Yes, Mademoiselle, they are leaving the
house.'

She did not understand my reservation.

'What magic have you used?'  she said almost gaily; it was
wonderful how hope had changed her.  'Besides, I am curious to
learn how you managed to avoid fighting.'

'After taking a blow?'  I said bitterly.

'Monsieur, I did not mean that,' she said reproachfully.

But her face clouded.  I saw that, viewed in this light--in
which, I suppose, she had not hitherto--the matter perplexed her
more than before.

I took a sudden resolution.

'Have you ever heard, Mademoiselle,' I said gravely, plucking off
while I spoke the dead leaves from a plant beside me, 'of a
gentleman by name De Berault?  Known in Paris, I have heard, by
the sobriquet of the Black Death?'

'The duellist?'  she answered, looking at me in wonder.  'Yes, I
have heard of him.  He killed a young gentleman of this province
at Nancy two years back.  'It was a sad story,' she continued,
shuddering slightly, 'of a dreadful man.  God keep our friends
from such!'

'Amen!'  I said quietly.  But, in spite of myself, I could not
meet her eyes.

'Why?'  she answered, quickly taking alarm at; my silence.  'What
of him, M. de Barthe?  Why have you mentioned him?'

'Because he is here, Mademoiselle.'

'Here?'  she exclaimed.  'At Cocheforet?'

'Yes, Mademoiselle,' I answered soberly.  'I am he.'



CHAPTER X

CLON

'You!'  she cried, in a voice which pierced my heart.  'You are
M. de Berault?  It is impossible!'  But, glancing askance at her
--I could not face her I saw that the blood had left her cheeks.

'Yes, Mademoiselle,' I answered in a low tone.  'De Barthe was my
mother's name.  When I came here, a stranger, I took it that I
might not be known; that I might again speak to a good woman, and
not see her shrink.  That, and--but why trouble you with all
this?'  I continued rebelling, against her silence, her turned
shoulder, her averted face.  'You asked me, Mademoiselle, how I
could take a blow and let the striker go.  I have answered.  It
is the one privilege M. de Berault possesses.'

'Then,' she replied almost in a whisper, 'if I were M. de
Berault, I would avail myself of it, and never fight again.'

'In that event, Mademoiselle,' I answered coldly, 'I should lose
my men friends as well as my women friends.  Like Monseigneur the
Cardinal, rule by fear.'

She shuddered, either at the name or at the idea my words called
up; and, for a moment, we stood awkwardly silent.  The shadow of
the sundial fell between us; the garden was still; here and there
a leaf fluttered slowly down.  With each instant of that silence,
of that aversion, I felt the gulf between us growing wider, I
felt myself growing harder; I mocked at her past which was so
unlike mine; I mocked at mine, and called it fate.  I was on the
point of turning from her with a bow--and with a furnace in my
breast--when she spoke.

'There is a last rose lingering there,' she said, a slight tremor
in her voice.  'I cannot reach it.  Will you pluck it for me, M.
de Berault?'

I obeyed her, my hand trembling, my face on fire.  She took the
rose from me, and placed it in the bosom of her dress, And I saw
that her hand trembled too, and that her cheek was dark with
blushes.

She turned without more ado, and began to walk towards the house.
'Heaven forbid that I should misjudge you a second time!'  she
said in a low voice.  'And, after all, who am I, that I should
judge you at all?  An hour ago I would have killed that man had I
possessed the power.'

'You repented, Mademoiselle,' I said huskily.  I could scarcely
speak.

'Do you never repent?'  she said.

'Yes.  But too late, Mademoiselle.'

'Perhaps it is never too late,' she answered softly.

'Alas, when a man is dead--'

'You may rob a man of worse than life!'  she replied with energy,
stopping me by a gesture.  'If you have never robbed a man--or a
woman--of honour!  If you have never ruined boy or girl, M. de
Berault!  If you have never pushed another into the pit and gone
by it yourself!  If--but, for murder?  Listen.  You are a
Romanist, but I am a Huguenot, and have read.  "Thou shall not
kill!" it is written; and the penalty, "By man shall thy blood be
shed!" But, "If you cause one of these little ones to offend, it
were better for you that a mill-stone were hanged about your
neck, and that you were cast into the depths of the sea."'

'Mademoiselle, you are merciful,' I muttered.

'I need mercy myself,' she answered, sighing.  'And I have had
few temptations.  How do I know what you have suffered?'

'Or done!'  I said, almost rudely.

'Where a man has not lied, nor betrayed, nor sold himself or
others,' she answered in a low tone, 'I think I can forgive all
else.  I can better put up with force,' she added smiling sadly,
'than with fraud.'

Ah, Dieu!  I turned away my face that she might not see how pale
it grew; that she might not guess how her words, meant in mercy,
stabbed me to the heart.  And yet, then, for the first time,
while viewing in all its depth and width the gulf which separated
us, I was not hardened; I was not cast back upon myself.  Her
gentleness, her pity, her humility softened me, while they
convicted me.  My God, how, after this, could I do that which I
had come to do?  How could I stab her in the tenderest part, how
could I inflict on her that rending pang, how could I meet her
eyes, and stand before her, a Caliban, a Judas, the vilest,
lowest thing she could conceive?

I stood, a moment, speechless and disordered; overcome by her
words, by my thoughts.  I have seen a man so stand when he has
lost all at the tables.  Then I turned to her; and for an instant
I thought that my tale was told already, I thought that she had
pierced my disguise.  For her face was changed--stricken as with
fear.  The next moment, I saw that she was not looking at me, but
beyond me; and I turned quickly and saw a servant hurrying from
the house to us.  It was Louis.  His eyes were staring, his hair
waved, his cheeks were flabby with dismay, He breathed as if he
had been running.

'What is it?'  Mademoiselle cried, while he was still some way
off.  'Speak, man.  My sister?  Is she--'

'Clon,' he gasped.

The name changed her to stone.

'Clon?  What of him?'  she muttered.

'In the village!'  Louis panted, his tongue stuttering with
terror.  'They are flogging him.  They are killing him!  To make
him tell!'

Mademoiselle grasped the sundial and leant against it, her face
colourless; and, for an instant, I thought that she was fainting.

'Tell?'  I said mechanically.  'But he cannot tell.  He is dumb,
man.'

'They will make him guide them,' Louis groaned, covering his ears
with his shaking hands, his face the colour of paper.  'And his
cries!  Oh, Monsieur, go, go!'  he continued, in a thrilling
tone. 'Save him.  All through tie wood I heard his cries.  It was
horrible!  horrible!'

Mademoiselle uttered a moan of pain; and I turned to support her,
thinking each second to see her fall.  But with a sudden
movement she straightened herself, and, quickly slipping by me,
with eyes that seemed to see nothing, she set off swiftly down
the walk towards the meadow gate.

I ran after her; but, taken by surprise as I was, it was only by
a great effort I reached the gate before her, and thrusting
myself in the road, barred the way.

'Let me pass!'  she panted, striving to thrust me on one side.
'Out of my way, sir!  I am going to the village.'

'You are not going to the village,' I said sternly.  'Go back; to
the house, Mademoiselle, and at once.'

'My servant!'  she wailed.  'Let me go!  Let me go!  Do you think
I can rest here while they torture him?  He cannot speak, and
they--they--'

'Go back, Mademoiselle,' I said, with decision.  'Your presence
would only make matters worse!  I will go myself, and what one
man can do against many, I will!  Louis, give your mistress your
arm and take her to the house.  Take her to Madame.'

'But you will go?'  she cried.  And before I could stay her--I
swear I would have stopped her if I could--she raised my hand and
carried it to her trembling lips.  'You will go!  Go and stop
them!  Stop them, and Heaven reward you, Monsieur!'

I did not answer; nay, I did not once look back, as I crossed the
meadow; but I did not look forward either.  Doubtless it was
grass I trod, and the wood was before me with the sun shining
aslant on it; doubtless the house rose behind me with a flame
here and there in the windows.  But I went in a dream, among
shadows; with a racing pulse, in a glow from head to heel;
conscious of nothing but the touch of Mademoiselle's warm lips on
my hand, seeing neither meadow nor house, nor even the dark
fringe of wood before me, but only Mademoiselle's passionate
face.  For the moment I was drunk:  drunk with that to which I
had been so long a stranger, with that which a man may scorn for
years, to find it at last beyond his reach drunk with the touch
of a good woman's lips.

I passed the bridge in this state; and my feet were among the
brushwood before the heat and fervour in which I moved found on a
sudden their direction.  Something began to penetrate to my
veiled senses--a hoarse inarticulate cry, now deep, now shrilling
horribly, that of itself seemed to fill the wood.  It came at
intervals of half a minute or so, and made the flesh creep, it
rang so full of dumb pain, of impotent wrestling, of unspeakable
agony.  I am a man and have seen things.  I saw the Concini
beheaded, and Chalais ten years later--they gave him thirty-four
blows; and when I was a boy I escaped from the college and viewed
from a great distance Ravaillac torn by horses--that was in the
year ten.  But the horrible cries I now heard, filled me, perhaps
because I was alone and fresh from the sight of Mademoiselle,
with loathing inexpressible.  The very wood, though the sun had
not yet set, seemed to grow dark.  I ran on through it, cursing,
until the hovels of the village came in sight.  Again the shriek
rose, a pulsing horror, and this time I could hear the lash fall
on the sodden flesh, I could sec in fancy the dumb man,
trembling, quivering, straining against his bonds.  And then, in
a moment, I was in the street, and, as the scream once more tore
the air, I dashed round the corner by the inn, and came upon
them.

I did not look at HIM, but I saw Captain Larolle and the
Lieutenant, and a ring of troopers, and one man, bare-armed,
teasing out with his fingers the thongs of a whip.  The thongs
dripped blood, and the sight fired the mine.  The rage I had
suppressed when the Lieutenant bearded me earlier in the
afternoon, the passion with which Mademoiselle's distress had
filled my breast, on the instant found vent.  I sprang through
the line of soldiers; and striking the man with the whip a buffet
between the shoulders, which hurled him breathless to the ground,
I turned on the leaders.

'You fiends!'  I cried.  'Shame on you!  The man is dumb!  Dumb;
and if I had ten men with me, I would sweep you and your scum out
of the village with broomsticks.  Lay on another lash,' I
continued recklessly, 'and I will see whether you or the Cardinal
be the stronger.'

The Lieutenant stared at me, his grey moustache bristling, his
eyes almost starting from his head.  Some of the troopers laid
their hands on their swords, but no one moved, and only the
Captain spoke.

'MILLE DIABLES!'  he swore.  'What is all this about?  Are you
mad, sir?'

'Mad or sane!'  I cried furiously.  'Lay on another lash, and you
shall repent it.'

For an instant there was a pause of astonishment.  Then, to my
surprise, the Captain laughed--laughed loudly.

'Very heroic,' he said.  'Quite magnificent, M. Chevalier-
errant.  But you see, unfortunately, you come too late.'

'Too late,' I said incredulously.

'Yes, too late,' he replied, with a mocking smile.  And the
Lieutenant grinned too.  'Unfortunately, you see, the man has
just confessed.  We have only been giving him an extra touch or
two, to impress his memory, and save us the trouble of lashing
him up again.'

'I don't believe it,' I said bluntly--but I felt the check, and
fell to earth.  'The man cannot speak.'

'No, but he has managed to tell us what we want; that he will
guide us to the place we are seeking,' the Captain answered
drily.  'The whip, if it cannot find a man a tongue, can find him
wits.  What is more, I think that he will keep his word,' he
continued, with a hideous scowl.  'For I warn him that if he does
not, all your heroics shall not save him.  He is a rebel dog, and
known to us of old; and I will flay his back to the bones, ay,
until we can see his heart beating through his ribs, but I will
have what I want--in your teeth, too, you d--d meddler.'

'Steady, steady!'  I said, sobered.  I saw that he was telling
the truth.  'Is he going to take you to M. de Cocheforet's
hiding-place?'

'Yes, he is!'  the Captain retorted.  'Have you any objection to
that, Master Spy?'

'None,' I replied.  'Only I shall go with you.  And if you live
three months, I shall kill you for that name-behind the barracks
at Auch, M. le Capitaine.'

He changed colour, but he answered me boldly enough.

'I don't know that you will go with us,' he said, with a snarl.
'That is as we please.'

'I have the Cardinal's orders,' I said sternly.

'The Cardinal?'  he exclaimed, stung to fury by this repetition
of the name.  'The Cardinal be--'

But the Lieutenant laid his hand on his lips and stopped him.

'Hush!'  he said.  Then more quietly, 'Your pardon, M. le
Capitaine; but the least said the soonest mended.  Shall I give
orders to the men to fall in?'

The Captain nodded sullenly.

The Lieutenant turned to his prisoner.

'Take him down!'  he commanded in his harsh, monotonous voice.
'Throw his blouse over him, and tie his hands.  And do you two,
Paul and Lebrun, guard him.  Michel, bring the whip, or he may
forget how it tastes.  Sergeant, choose four good men, and
dismiss the rest to their quarters.'

'Shall we need the horses?'  the sergeant asked.

'I don't know,' the Captain answered peevishly.  'What does the
rogue say?'

The Lieutenant stepped up to him.

'Listen!'  he said grimly.  'Nod if you mean yes, and shake your
head if you mean no.  And have a care you answer truly.  Is it
more than a mile to this place?'

They had loosened the poor wretch's fastenings, and covered his
back.  He stood leaning his shoulder against the wall, his mouth
still panting, the sweat running down his hollow cheeks.  His
sunken eyes were closed, but a quiver now and again ran through
his frame.  The Lieutenant repeated his question, and, getting no
answer, looked round for orders.  The Captain met the look, and
crying savagely, 'Answer will you, you mule!'  struck the half-
swooning miserable across the back with his switch.  The effect
was magical.  Covered, as his shoulders were, the man sprang
erect with a shriek of pain, raising his chin, and hollowing his
back; and in that attitude stood an instant with starting eyes,
gasping for breath.  Then he sank back against the wall, moving
his mouth spasmodically.  His face was the colour of lead.

'Diable!  I think that we have gone too far with him!'  the
Captain muttered.

'Bring some wine!'  the Lieutenant replied.  'Quick with it!'

I looked on, burning with indignation, and in some excitement
besides.  For if the man took them to the place, and they
succeeded in seizing Cocheforet, there was an end of the matter
as far as I was concerned.  It was off my shoulders, and I might
leave the village when I pleased; nor was it likely--since he
would have his man, though not through me--that the Cardinal
would refuse to grant me an amnesty.  On the whole, I thought
that he would prefer that things should take this course; and
assuming the issue, I began to wonder whether it would be
necessary in that event that Madame should know the truth.  I had
a kind of vision of a reformed Berault, dead to play and purging
himself at a distance from Zaton's; winning, perhaps, a name in
the Italian war, and finally--but, pshaw!  I was a fool.

However, be these things as they might, it was essential that I
should see the arrest made; and I waited patiently while they
revived the tortured man, and made their dispositions.  These
took some time; so that the sun was down, and it was growing dusk
when we marched out, Clon going first, supported by his two
guards, the Captain and I following--abreast, and eyeing one
another suspiciously; the Lieutenant, with the sergeant and five
troopers, bringing up the rear.  Clon moved slowly, moaning from
time to time; and but for the aid given him by the two men with
him, must have sunk down again and again.

He led the way out between two houses close to the inn, and
struck a narrow track, scarcely discernible, which ran behind
other houses, and then plunged into the thickest part of the
wood.  A single person, traversing the covert, might have made
such a track; or pigs, or children.  But it was the first idea
that occurred to us, and put us all on the alert.  The Captain
carried a cocked pistol, I held my sword drawn, and kept a
watchful eye on HIM; and the deeper the dusk fell in the wood,
the more cautiously we went, until at last we came out with a
sort of jump into a wider and lighter path.

I looked up and down, and saw behind me a vista of tree-trunks,
before me a wooden bridge and an open meadow, lying cold and grey
in the twilight; and I stood in astonishment.  We were in the old
path to the Chateau!  I shivered at the thought that he was going
to take us there, to the house, to Mademoiselle!

The Captain also recognised the place, and swore aloud.  But the
dumb man went on unheeding until he reached the wooden bridge.
There he stopped short, and looked towards the dark outline of
the house, which was just visible, one faint light twinkling
sadly in the west wing.  As the Captain and I pressed up behind
him, he raised his hands and seemed to wring them towards the
house.

'Have a care!'  the Captain growled.  'Play me no tricks, or--'

He did not finish the sentence, for Clon, as if he well
understood his impatience, turned back from the bridge, and,
entering the wood to the left, began to ascend the bank of the
stream.  We had not gone a hundred yards before the ground grew
rough, and the undergrowth thick; and yet through all ran a kind
of path which enabled us to advance, dark as it was now growing.
Very soon the bank on which we moved began to rise above the
water, and grew steep and rugged.  We turned a shoulder, where
the stream swept round a curve, and saw we were in the mouth of a
small ravine, dark and sheer-sided.  The water brawled along the
bottom, over boulders and through chasms.  In front, the slope on
which we stood shaped itself into a low cliff; but halfway
between its summit and the water a ledge, or narrow terrace,
running along the face, was dimly visible.

'Ten to one, a cave!'  the Captain muttered.  'It is a likely
place.'

'And an ugly one!'  I replied with a sneer.  'Which one against
ten might hold for hours!'

'If the ten had no pistols--yes!'  he answered viciously.  'But
you see we have.  Is he going that way?'

He was.  As soon as this was clear, Larolle turned to his
comrade,

'Lieutenant,' he said, speaking in a low voice, though the
chafing of the stream below us covered ordinary sounds; 'what say
you?  Shall we light the lanthorns, or press on while there is
still a glimmering of day?'

'On, I should say, M. le Capitaine,' the Lieutenant answered.
'Prick him in the back if he falters.  I will warrant,' the brute
added with a chuckle, 'he has a tender place or two.'

The Captain gave the word and we moved forward.  It was evident
now that the cliff-path was our destination.  It was possible for
the eye to follow the track all the way to it, through rough
stones and brushwood; and though Clon climbed feebly, and with
many groans, two minutes saw us step on to it.  It did not prove
to be, in fact, the perilous place it looked at a distance.  The
ledge, grassy and terrace-like, sloped slightly downwards and
outwards, and in parts was slippery; but it was as wide as a
highway, and the fall to the water did not exceed thirty feet.
Even in such a dim light as now displayed it to us, and by
increasing the depth and unseen dangers of the gorge gave a kind
of impressiveness to our movements, a nervous woman need not have
feared to tread it, I wondered how often Mademoiselle had passed
along it with her milk-pitcher.

'I think that we have him now,' Captain Larolle muttered,
twisting his moustachios, and looking about to make his last
dispositions.  'Paul and Lebrun, see that your man makes no
noise.  Sergeant, come forward with your carbine, but do not fire
without orders.  Now, silence all, and close up, Lieutenant.
Forward!'

We advanced about a hundred paces, keeping the cliff on our left,
turned a shoulder, and saw, a few paces in front of us, a slight
hollow, a black blotch in the grey duskiness of the cliff-side.
The prisoner stopped, and, raising his bound hands, pointed to
it.

'There?'  the Captain whispered, pressing forward.  'Is it the
place?'

Clon nodded.  The Captain's voice shook with excitement.

'Paul and Lebrun remain here with the prisoner,' he said, in a
low tone.  'Sergeant, come forward with me.  Now, are you ready?
Forward!'

At the word he and the sergeant passed quickly, one on either
side of Clon and his guards.  The path grew narrow here, and the
Captain passed outside.  The eyes of all but one were on the
black blotch, the hollow in the cliff-side, expecting we knew not
what--a sudden shot or the rush or a desperate man; and no one
saw exactly what happened.  But somehow, as the Captain passed
abreast of him, the prisoner thrust back his guards, and leaping
sideways, flung his unbound arms round Larolle's body, and in an
instant swept him, shouting, to the verge of the precipice.

It was done in a moment.  By the time our startled wits and eyes
were back with them, the two were already tottering on the edge,
looking in the gloom like one dark form.  The sergeant, who was
the first to find his head, levelled his carbine, but, as the
wrestlers twirled and twisted, the Captain, shrieking out oaths
and threats, the mute silent as death, it was impossible to see
which was which, and the sergeant lowered his gun again, while
the men held back nervously.  The ledge sloped steeply there, the
edge was vague, already the two seemed to be wrestling in mid
air; and the mute was desperate.

That moment of hesitation was fatal.  Clon's long arms were round
the other's arms, crushing them into his ribs; Clon's skull-like
face grinned hate into the other's eyes; his bony limbs curled
round him like the folds of a snake.  Larolle's strength gave
way.

'Damn you all!  Why don't you come up?'  he cried.  And then,
'Ah!  Mercy!  mercy!'  came in one last scream from his lips.  As
the Lieutenant, taken aback before, sprang forward to his aid,
the two toppled over the edge, and in a second hurtled out of
sight.

'MON DIEU!'  the Lieutenant cried; the answer was a dull splash
in the depths below.  He flung up his arms.  'Water!'  he said.
'Quick, men, get down.  We may save him yet.'

But there was no path, and night was come, and the men's nerves
were shaken.  The lanthorns had to be lit, and the way to be
retraced; by the time we reached the dark pool which lay below,
the last bubbles were gone from the surface, the last ripples had
beaten themselves out against the banks.  The pool still rocked
sullenly, and the yellow light showed a man's hat floating, and
near it a glove three parts submerged.  But that was all.  The
mute's dying grip had known no loosening, nor his hate any fear.
I heard afterwards that when they dragged the two out next day,
his fingers were in the other's eye-sockets, his teeth in his
throat.  If ever man found death sweet, it was he!

As we turned slowly from the black water, some shuddering, some
crossing themselves, the Lieutenant looked at me.

'Curse you!'  he said passionately.  'I believe that you are
glad.'

He deserved his fate,' I answered coldly.  'Why should I pretend
to be sorry?  It was now or in three months.  And for the other
poor devil's sake I am glad.'

He glared at me for a moment in speechless anger.

At last, 'I should like to have you tied up!'  he said between
his teeth.

'I should think that you had had enough of tying up for one day!'
I retorted.  'But there,' I went on contemptuously, 'it comes of
making officers out of the canaille.  Dogs love blood.  The
teamster must lash something if he can no longer lash his
horses.'

We were back, a sombre little procession, at the wooden bridge
when I said this.  He stopped.

'Very well,' he replied, nodding viciously.  'That decides me.
Sergeant, light me this way with a lanthorn.  The rest of you to
the village.  Now, Master Spy,' he continued, glancing at me with
gloomy spite, 'Your road is my road.  I think I know how to spoil
your game.'

I shrugged my shoulders in disdain, and together, the sergeant
leading the way with the light, we crossed the dim meadow, and
passed through the gate where Mademoiselle had kissed my hand,
and up the ghostly walk between the rose bushes.  I wondered
uneasily what the Lieutenant would be at, and what he intended;
but the lanthorn-light which now fell on the ground at our feet,
and now showed one of us to the other, high-lit in a frame of
blackness, discovered nothing in his grizzled face but settled
hostility.  He wheeled at the end of the walk to go to the main
door, but as he did so I saw the flutter of a white skirt by the
stone seat against the house, and I stepped that way.

'Mademoiselle?'  I said softly.  'Is it you?'

'Clon?'  she muttered, her voice quivering.  'What of him?'

'He is past pain,' I answered gently.  'He is dead--yes, dead,
Mademoiselle, but in his own way.  Take comfort.'

She stifled a sob; then before I could say more, the Lieutenant,
with his sergeant and light, were at my elbow.  He saluted
Mademoiselle roughly.  She looked at him with shuddering
abhorrence.

'Are you come to flog me too, sir?'  she said passionately.  'Is
it not enough that you have murdered my servant?'

'On the contrary, it was he who killed my Captain,' the
Lieutenant answered, in another tone than I had expected.  'If
your servant is dead so is my comrade.'

'Captain Larolle?'  she murmured, gazing with startled eyes, not
at him but at me.

I nodded.

'How?'  she asked.

'Clon flung the Captain and himself--into the river pool above
the bridge,' I said.

She uttered a low cry of awe and stood silent; but her lips moved
and I think that she prayed for Clon, though she was a Huguenot.
Meanwhile, I had a fright.  The lanthorn, swinging in the
sergeant's hand, and throwing its smoky light now on the stone
seat, now on the rough wall above it, showed me something else.
On the seat, doubtless where Mademoiselle's hand had lain as she
sat in the dark, listening and watching and shivering, stood a
pitcher of food.  Beside her, in that place, it was damning
evidence, and I trembled least the Lieutenant's eye should fall
upon it, lest the sergeant should see it; and then, in a moment,
I forgot all about it.  The Lieutenant was speaking and his voice
was doom.  My throat grew dry as I listened; my tongue stuck to
my mouth I tried to look at Mademoiselle, but I could not.

'It is true that the Captain is gone,' he said stiffly, 'but
others are alive, and about one of them a word with you, by your
leave, Mademoiselle.  I have listened to a good deal of talk from
this fine gentleman friend of yours.  He has spent the last
twenty-four hours saying "You shall!" and "You shall not!" He
came from you and took a very high tone because we laid a little
whip-lash about that dumb devil of yours.  He called us brutes
and beasts, and but for him I am not sure that my friend would
not now be alive.  But when he said a few minutes ago that he was
glad--glad of it, d--him!--then I fixed it in my mind that I
would be even with him.  And I am going to be!'

'What do you mean?'  Mademoiselle asked, wearily interrupting
him. 'If you think that you can prejudice me against this
gentleman--'

'That is precisely what I am going to do!  And a little more than
that!'  he answered.

'You will be only wasting your breath!'  she retorted.

'Wait!  Wait, Mademoiselle---until you have heard,' he said.
'For I swear to you that if ever a black-hearted scoundrel, a
dastardly sneaking spy trod the earth, it is this fellow!  And I
am going to expose him.  Your own eyes and your own ears shall
persuade you.  I am not particular, but I would not eat, I would
not drink, I would not sit down with him!  I would rather be
beholden to the meanest trooper in my squadron than to him!  Ay,
I would, so help me Heaven!'

And the Lieutenant, turning squarely on his heel, spat on the
ground.



CHAPTER XI

THE ARREST

It had come, and I saw no way of escape.  The sergeant was
between us and I could not strike him.  And I found no words.  A
score of times I had thought with shrinking how I should reveal
my secret to Mademoiselle--what I should say, and how she would
take it; but in my mind it had been always a voluntary act, this
disclosure, it had been always I who unmasked myself and she who
listened--alone; and in this voluntariness and this privacy there
had been something which took from the shame of anticipation.
But here--here was no voluntary act on my part, no privacy,
nothing but shame.  And I stood mute, convicted, speechless,
under her eyes--like the thing I was.

Yet if anything could have braced me it was Mademoiselle's voice
when she answered him.

'Go on, Monsieur,' she said calmly, 'you will have done the
sooner.'

'You do not believe me?'  he replied.  'Then, I say, look at him!
Look at him!  If ever shame--'

'Monsieur,' she said abruptly--she did not look at me, 'I am
ashamed of myself.'

'But you don't hear me,' the Lieutenant rejoined hotly.  'His
very name is not his own!  He is not Barthe at all.  He is
Berault, the gambler, the duellist, the bully; whom if you--'

Again she interrupted him.

'I know it,' she said coldly.  'I know it all; and if you have
nothing more to tell me, go, Monsieur.  Go!'  she continued in a
tone of infinite scorn.  'Be satisfied, that you have earned my
contempt as well as my abhorrence.'

He looked for a moment taken aback.  Then,--

'Ay, but I have more,' he cried, his voice stubbornly triumphant.

'I forgot that you would think little of that.  I forgot that a
swordsman has always the ladies' hearts---but I have more.  Do
you know, too, that he is in the Cardinal's pay?  Do you know
that he is here on the same errand which brings us here--to
arrest M. de Cocheforet?  Do you know that while we go about the
business openly and in soldier fashion, it is his part to worm
himself into your confidence, to sneak into Madame's intimacy, to
listen at your door, to follow your footsteps, to hang on your
lips, to track you--track you until you betray yourselves and the
man?  Do you know this, and that all his sympathy is a lie,
Mademoiselle?  His help, so much bait to catch the secret?  His
aim blood-money--blood-money?  Why, MORBLEU!'  the Lieutenant
continued, pointing his finger at me, and so carried away by
passion, so lifted out of himself by wrath and indignation, that
I shrank before him--'you talk, lady, of contempt and abhorrence
in the same breath with me, but what have you for him--what have
you for him--the spy, the informer, the hired traitor?  And if
you doubt me, if you want evidence, look at him.  Only look at
him, I say.'

And he might say it; for I stood silent still, cowering and
despairing, white with rage and hate.  But Mademoiselle did not
look.  She gazed straight at the Lieutenant.

'Have you done?'  she said.

'Done?'  he stammered; her words, her air, bringing him to earth
again.  'Done?  Yes, if you believe me.'

'I do not,' she answered proudly.  'If that be all, be satisfied,
Monsieur.  I do not believe you.'

'Then tell me this,' he retorted, after a moment of stunned
surprise.  'Answer me this!  Why, if he was not on our side, do
you think that we let him remain here?  Why did we suffer him to
stay in a suspected house, bullying us, annoying us, thwarting
us, taking your part from hour to hour?'

'He has a sword, Monsieur,' she answered with fine contempt,

'MILLE DIABLES!'  he cried, snapping his fingers in a rage.
'That for his sword!  It was because he held the Cardinal's
commission, I tell you, because he had equal authority with us.
Because we had no choice.'

'And that being so, Monsieur, why are you now betraying him?'
she asked.  He swore at that, feeling the stroke go home.

'You must be mad!'  he said, glaring at her.  'Cannot you see
that the man is what I tell you?  Look at him!  Look at him, I
say! Listen to him!  Has he a word to say for himself?'

Still she did not look.

'It is late,' she replied coldly.  'And I am not very well.  If
you have done, quite done--perhaps, you will leave me, Monsieur.'

'MON DIEU!  he exclaimed, shrugging his shoulders, and grinding
his teeth in impotent rage.  You are mad!  I have told you the
truth, and you will not believe it.  Well--on your head be it
then, Mademoiselle.  I have no more to say!  You will see.'

And with that, without more, fairly conquered by her staunchness,
he saluted her, gave the word to the sergeant, turned and went
down the path.

The sergeant went after him, the lanthorn swaying in his hand.
And we two were left alone.  The frogs were croaking in the pool,
a bat flew round in circles; the house, the garden, all lay quiet
under the darkness, as on the night which I first came to it.

And would to Heaven I had never come that was the cry in my
heart.  Would to Heaven I had never seen this woman, whose
nobleness and faith were a continual shame to me; a reproach
branding me every hour I stood in her presence with all vile and
hateful names.  The man just gone, coarse, low-bred, brutal
soldier as he was, manflogger and drilling-block, had yet found
heart to feel my baseness, and words in which to denounce it.
What, then, would she say, when the truth came home to her?  What
shape should I take in her eyes then?  How should I be remembered
through all the years then?

Then?  But now?  What was she thinking now, at this moment as she
stood silent and absorbed near the stone seat, a shadowy figure
with face turned from me?  Was she recalling the man's words,
fitting them to the facts and the past, adding this and that
circumstance?  Was she, though she had rebuffed him in the body,
collating, now he was gone, all that he had said, and out of
these scraps piecing together the damning truth?  Was she, for
all that she had said, beginning to see me as I was?  The thought
tortured me.  I could brook uncertainty no longer.  I went nearer
to her and touched her sleeve.

'Mademoiselle,' I said in a voice which sounded hoarse and
unnatural even in my own ears, 'do you believe this of me?'

She started violently, and turned.

'Pardon, Monsieur!'  she murmured, passing her hand over her
brow; 'I had forgotten that you were here.  Do I believe what?'

'What that man said of me,' I muttered.

'That!'  she exclaimed.  And then she stood a moment gazing at me
in a strange fashion.  'Do I believe that, Monsieur?  But come,
come!'  she continued impetuously.  'Come, and I will show you if
I believe it.  But not here.'

She turned as she spoke, and led the way on the instant into the
house through the parlour door, which stood half open.  The room
inside was pitch dark, but she took me fearlessly by the hand and
led me quickly through it, and along the passage, until we came
to the cheerful lighted hall, where a great fire burned on the
hearth.  All traces of the soldiers' occupation had been swept
away.  But the room was empty.

She led me to the fire, and there in the full light, no longer a
shadowy creature, but red-lipped, brilliant, throbbing with life
and beauty, she stood opposite me--her eyes shining, her colour
high, her breast heaving.

'Do I believe it?'  she said in a thrilling voice.  'I will tell
you.  M. de Cocheforet's hiding-place is in the hut behind the
fern-stack, two furlongs beyond the village on the road to Auch.
You know now what no one else knows, he and I and Madame
excepted.  You hold in your hands his life and my honour; and you
know also, M. de Berault, whether I believe that tale.'

'My God!'  I cried.  And I stood looking at her until something
of the horror in my eyes crept into hers, and she shuddered and
stepped back from me.

'What is it?  What is it?'  she whispered, clasping her hands.
And with all the colour gone suddenly from her cheeks she peered
trembling into the corners and towards the door.  'There is no
one here.'

I forced myself to speak, though I was trembling all over like a
man in an ague.  'No, Mademoiselle, there is no one here,' I
muttered.  'There is no one here.'  And then I let my head fall
on my breast, and I stood before her, the statue of despair.  Had
she felt a grain of suspicion, a grain of doubt, my bearing must
have opened her eyes; but her mind was cast in so noble a mould
that, having once thought ill of me and been converted, she could
feel no doubt again.  She must trust all in all.  A little
recovered from her fright, she stood looking at me in great
wonder; and at last she had a thought--

'You are not well?'  she said suddenly.  'It is your old wound,
Monsieur.  Now I have it?'

'Yes, Mademoiselle,' I muttered faintly, 'it is.'

'I will call Clon!'  she cried impetuously.  And then, with a
sob:  'Ah!  poor Clon!  He is gone.  But there is still Louis.  I
will call him and he will get you something.'

She was gone from the room before I could stop her, and I stood
leaning against the table possessor at last of the secret which I
had come so far to win; able in a moment to open the door and go
out into the night, and make use of it--and yet the most unhappy
of men.  The sweat stood on my brow; my eyes wandered round the
room; I turned towards the door, with some mad thought of flight
--of flight from her, from the house, from everything; and I had
actually taken a step towards this, when on the door, the outer
door, there came a sudden hurried knocking which jarred every
nerve in my body.  I started, and stopped.  I stood a moment in
the middle of the floor gazing at the door, as at a ghost.  Then,
glad of action, glad of anything that might relieve the tension
of my feelings, I strode to it and pulled it sharply open.

On the threshold, his flushed face lit up by the light behind me,
stood one of the knaves whom I had brought with me to Auch.  He
had been running, and panted heavily; but he had kept his wits,
and the instant I, appeared he grasped my sleeve.

'Ah!  Monsieur, the very man!'  he cried.  'Quick!  come this
instant, lose not a moment, and you may yet be first.  They have
the secret!  The soldiers have found Monsieur!'

'Found him?'  I echoed.  'M. de Cocheforet?'

'No; but they know the place where he lies.  It was found by
accident.  The Lieutenant was gathering his men when I came away.
If we are quick, we may yet be first.'

'But the place?'  I said.

'I could not hear,' he answered bluntly.  'We must hang on their
skirts, and at the last moment strike in.  It is the only way,
Monsieur.'

The pair of pistols I had taken from the shock-headed man lay on
a chest by the door.  Without waiting for more I snatched them up
and my hat, and joined him, and in a moment we were running down
the garden.  I looked back once before we passed the gate, and I
saw the light streaming out through the door which.  I had left
open; and I fancied that for an instant a figure darkened the
gap.  But the fancy only strengthened the one single purpose, the
iron resolve, which had taken possession of me and all my
thoughts.  I must be first; I must anticipate the Lieutenant; I
must make the arrest myself.  I must be first.  And I ran on only
the faster.

We were across the meadow and in the wood in a moment.  There,
instead of keeping along the common path, I boldly singled out--
my senses seemed to be preternaturally keen--the smaller trail by
which Clon had brought us.  Along this I ran unfalteringly,
avoiding logs and pitfalls as by instinct, and following all its
turns and twists, until we came to the back of the inn, and could
hear the murmur of subdued voices in the village street, the
sharp low word of command, and the clink of weapons; and could
see over and between the houses the dull glare of lanthorns and
torches.

I grasped my man's arm, and crouched down listening.  When I had
heard enough, 'Where is your mate?'  I said in his ear.

'With them,' he muttered.

'Then come,' I whispered rising.  'I have seen what I want.  Let
us go.'

But he caught me by the arm and detained me.

'You don't know the way,' he said.  'Steady, steady, Monsieur.
You go too fast.  They are just moving.  Let us join them, and
strike in when the time comes.  We must let them guide us.'

'Fool!'  I said, shaking off his hand.  'I tell you, I know where
he is!  I know where they are going.  Come, and we will pluck the
fruit while they are on the road to it.'

His only answer was an exclamation of surprise.  At that moment
the lights began to move.  The Lieutenant was starting.  The moon
was not yet up, the sky was grey and cloudy; to advance where we
were was to step into a wall of blackness.  But we had lost too
much already, and I did not hesitate.  Bidding my companion
follow me and use his legs, I sprang through a low fence which
rose before us; then stumbling blindly over some broken ground in
the rear of the houses, I came with a fall or two to a little
watercourse with steep sides.  Through this I plunged recklessly
and up the farther side, and, breathless and panting, gained the
road, beyond the village, and fifty yards in advance of the
Lieutenant's troop.

They had only two lanthorns burning, and we were beyond the
circle of light cast by these; while the steady tramp of so many
footsteps covered the noise we made.  We were in no danger of
being noticed, and in a twinkling we turned our backs, and as
fast as we could we ran down the road.  Fortunately, they were
thinking more of secrecy than speed, and in a minute we had
doubled the distance between them and us.  In two minutes their
lights were mere sparks shining in the gloom behind us.  We lost
even the tramp of their feet.  Then I began to look out and go
more slowly, peering into the shadows on either side for the
fernstack.

On one hand the hill rose steeply, on the other it fell away to
the stream.  On neither side was close wood, or my difficulties
had been immensely increased; but scattered oak trees stood here
and there among the bracken.  This helped me, and presently, on
the upper side, I came upon the dense substance of the stack
looming black against the lighter hill.

My heart beat fast, but it was no time for thought.  Bidding the
man in a whisper to follow me and be ready to back me up, I
climbed the bank softly, and, with a pistol in my hand, felt my
way to the rear of the stack, thinking to find a hut there, set
against the fern, and M. Cocheforet in it.  But I found no hut.
There was none; and, moreover, it was so dark now we were off the
road, that it came upon me suddenly, as I stood between the hill
and the stack, that I had undertaken a very difficult thing.  The
hut behind the fern stack.  But how far behind?  how far from it?
The dark slope stretched above us, infinite, immeasurable
shrouded in night.  To begin to climb it in search of a tiny hut,
possibly well hidden and hard to find in daylight, seemed an
endeavour as hopeless as to meet with the needle in the hay!  And
now while I stood, chilled and doubting, almost despairing, the
steps of the troop in the road began to grow audible, began to
come nearer.

'Well, Monsieur le Capitaine?'  the man beside me muttered--in
wonder why I stood.  'Which way?  or they will be before us yet.'

I tried to think, to reason it out; to consider where the hut
should be; while the wind sighed through the oaks, and here and
there I could hear an acorn fall.  But the thing pressed too
close on me; my thoughts would not be hurried, and at last I said
at a venture,--

'Up the hill.  Straight up from the stack.'

He did not demur, and we plunged at the ascent, knee-deep in
bracken and furze, sweating at every pore with our exertions, and
hearing the troop come every moment nearer on the road below.
Doubtless they knew exactly whither to go!  Forced to stop and
take breath when we had scrambled up fifty yards or so, I saw
their lanthorns shining like moving glow-worms; I could even hear
the clink of steel.  For all I could tell, the hut might be down
there, and we be moving from it.  But it was too late to go back
now--they were close to the fern-stack; and in despair I turned
to the hill again.  A dozen steps and I stumbled.  I rose and
plunged on again; again stumbled.  Then I found that I was
treading level earth.  And--was it water I saw before me, below
me?  or some mirage of the sky?

Neither; and I gripped my fellow's arm, as he came abreast of me,
and stopped him sharply.  Below us in the middle of a steep
hollow, a pit in the hill-side, a light shone out through some
aperture and quivered on the mist, like the pale lamp of a
moorland hobgoblin.  It made itself visible, displaying nothing
else; a wisp of light in the bottom of a black bowl.  Yet my
spirits rose with a great bound at sight of it; for I knew that I
had stumbled on the place I sought.

In the common run of things I should have weighed my next step
carefully, and gone about it slowly.  But here was no place for
thought, nor room for delay; and I slid down the side of the
hollow on the instant, and the moment my feet touched the bottom
sprang to the door of the little hut, whence the light issued.  A
stone turned under my feet in my rush, and I fell on my knees on
the threshold; but the fall only brought my face to a level with
the face of the man who lay inside on a bed of fern.  He had been
reading.  Startled by the sound I made, he dropped his book, and
in a flash stretched out his hand for a weapon.  But the muzzle
of my pistol covered him, he was not in a posture from which he
could spring, and at a sharp word from me he dropped his hand;
the tigerish glare which flickered for an instant in his eyes
gave place to a languid smile, and he shrugged his shoulders.

'EH BIEN!,' he said with marvellous composure.  'Taken at last!
Well, I was tired of it.'

'You are my prisoner, M. de Cocheforet,' I answered.  'Move a
hand and I kill you.  But you have still a choice.'

'Truly?'  he said, raising his eyebrows.

'Yes.  My orders are to take you to Paris alive or dead.  Give me
your parole that you will make no attempt to escape, and you
shall go thither at your ease and as a gentleman.  Refuse, and I
shall disarm and bind you, and you go as a prisoner.'

'What force have you?'  he asked curtly.  He still lay on his
elbow, his cloak covering him, the little Marot in which he had
been reading close to his hand.  But his quick black eyes, which
looked the keener for the pallor and thinness of his face, roved
ceaselessly over me, probed the darkness behind me, took note of
everything.

'Enough to compel you, Monsieur,' I replied sternly; 'but that is
not all.  There are thirty dragoons coming up the hill to secure
you, and they will make you no such offer.  Surrender to me
before they come, and give me your parole, and I will do all I
can for your comfort.  Delay, and you must fall into their hands.
There can be no escape.'

'You will take my word?'  he said slowly.

'Give it, and you may keep your pistols, M. de Cocheforet.'

'Tell me at least that you are not alone.'

'I am not alone.'

'Then I give it,' he said with a sigh.  'And for Heaven's sake
get me something to eat and a bed.  I am tired of this pig-sty.
MON DIEU!  it is a fortnight since I slept between sheets.'

'You shall sleep to-night in your own house, if you please,' I
answered hurriedly.  'But here they come.  Be good enough to stay
where you are for a moment, and I will meet them.'

I stepped out into the darkness, just as the Lieutenant, after
posting his men round the hollow, slid down with a couple of
sergeants to make the arrest.  The place round the open door was
pitch-dark.  He had not espied my man, who had lodged himself in
the deepest shadow of the hut, and when he saw me come out across
the light he took me for Cocheforet.  In a twinkling he thrust a
pistol into my face, and cried triumphantly,--'You are my
prisoner!'  while one of the sergeants raised a lanthorn and
threw its light into my eyes.

'What folly is this?'  I said savagely.

The Lieutenant's jaw fell, and he stood for a moment paralysed
with astonishment.  Less than an hour before he had left me at
the Chateau.  Thence he had come hither with the briefest delay;
yet he found me here before him.  He swore fearfully, his face
black, his moustachios stiff with rage.

'What is this?  What is it?'  he cried.  'Where is the man?'

'What man?'  I said.

'This Cocheforet!'  he roared, carried away by his passion.
'Don't lie to me!  He is here, and I will have him!'

'You are too late,' I said, watching him heedfully.  'M. de
Cocheforet is here, but he has already surrendered to me, and is
my prisoner."

'Your prisoner?'

'Certainly!'  I answered, facing the man with all the harshness I
could muster.  'I have arrested him by virtue of the Cardinal's
commission granted to me.  And by virtue of the same I shall keep
him.'

'You will keep him?'

'I shall!'

He stared at me for a moment, utterly aghast; the picture of
defeat.  Then on a sudden I saw his face lighten with, a new
idea.

'It is a d--d ruse!'  he shouted, brandishing his pistol like a
madman.  'It is a cheat and a fraud!  By God!  you have no
commission!  I see through it!  I see through it all!  You have
come here, and you have hocussed us!  You are of their side, and
this is your last shift to save him!'

'What folly is this?'  I said contemptuously.

'No folly at all,' he answered, perfect conviction in his tone.
'You have played upon us.  You have fooled us.  But I see through
it now.  An hour ago I exposed you to that fine Madame at the
house there, and I thought it a marvel that she did not believe
me.  I thought it a marvel that she did not see through you, when
you stood there before her, confounded, tongue-tied, a rogue
convicted.  But I understand now.  She knew you.  She was in the
plot, and you were in the plot, and I, who thought that I was
opening her eyes, was the only one fooled.  But it is my turn
now.  You have played a bold part and a clever one,' he
continued, a sinister light in his little eyes,' and I
congratulate you.  But it is at an end now, Monsieur.  You took
us in finely with your talk of Monseigneur, and his commission
and your commission, and the rest.  But I am not to be blinded
any longer--or bullied.  You have arrested him, have you?  You
have arrested him.  Well, by G--, I shall arrest him, and I shall
arrest you too.'

'You are mad!'  I said staggered as much by this new view of the
matter as by his perfect certainty.  'Mad, Lieutenant.'

'I was,' he snarled.  'But I am sane now.  I was mad when you
imposed upon us, when you persuaded me to think that you were
fooling the women to get the secret out of them, while all the
time you were sheltering them, protecting them, aiding them, and
hiding him--then I was mad.  But not now.  However, I ask your
pardon.  I thought you the cleverest sneak and the dirtiest hound
Heaven ever made.  I find you are cleverer than I thought, and an
honest traitor.  Your pardon.'

One of the men, who stood about the rim of the bowl above us,
laughed.  I looked at the Lieutenant and could willingly have
killed him.

'MON DIEU!'  I said--and I was so furious in my turn that I could
scarcely speak.  'Do you say that I am an impostor--that I do not
hold the Cardinal's commission?'

'I do say that,' he answered coolly.

'And that I belong to the rebel party?'

'I do,' he replied in the same tone.  'In fact,' with a grin, 'I
say that you are an honest man on the wrong side, M. de Berault.
And you say that you are a scoundrel on the right.  The
advantage, however, is with me, and I shall back my opinion by
arresting you.'

A ripple of coarse laughter ran round the hollow.  The sergeant
who held the lanthorn grinned, and a trooper at a distance called
out of the darkness 'A BON CHAT BON RAT!'  This brought a fresh
burst of laughter, while I stood speechless, confounded by the
stubbornness, the crassness, the insolence of the man.  'You
fool!'  I cried at last, 'you fool!'  And then M. de Cocheforet,
who had come out of the hut and taken his stand at my elbow,
interrupted me.

'Pardon me one moment,' he said, airily, looking at the
Lieutenant with raised eyebrows and pointing to me with his
thumb, 'but I am puzzled between you.  This gentleman's name?  Is
it de Berault or de Barthe?'

'I am M. de Berault,' I said, brusquely, answering for myself.

'Of Paris?'

'Yes, Monsieur, of Paris.'

'You are not, then, the gentleman who has been honouring my poor
house with his presence?'

'Oh, yes!'  the Lieutenant struck in, grinning.  'He is that
gentleman, too.'

'But I thought--I understood that that was M. de Barthe!'

'I am M. de Barthe, also,' I retorted impatiently.  'What of
that, Monsieur?  It was my mother's name.  I took it when I came
down here.'

'To--er--to arrest me, may I ask?'

'Yes,' I said, doggedly; 'to arrest you.  What of that?'

'Nothing,' he replied slowly and with a steady look at me--a look
I could not meet.  'Except that, had I known this before, M. de
Berault I should have thought longer before I surrendered to
you.'

The Lieutenant laughed, and I felt my cheek burn; but I affected
to see nothing, and turned to him again.  'Now, Monsieur,' I
said, 'are you satisfied?'

'No,' he answered?  'I am not!  You two may have rehearsed this
pretty scene a dozen times.  The word, it seems to me, is--Quick
march, back to quarters.'

At length I found myself driven to play my last card; much
against my will.

'Not so,' I said.  'I have my commission.'

'Produce it!'  he replied incredulously.

'Do you think that I carry it with me?'  I cried in scorn.  'Do
you think that when I came here, alone, and not with fifty
dragoons at my back, I carried the Cardinal's seal in my pocket
for the first lackey to find.  But you shall have it.  Where is
that knave of mine?'

The words were scarcely out of my mouth before a ready hand
thrust a paper into my fingers.  I opened it slowly, glanced at
it, and amid a pause of surprise gave it to the Lieutenant.  He
looked for a moment confounded.  Then, with a last instinct of
suspicion, he bade the sergeant hold up the lanthorn; and by its
light he proceeded to spell through the document.

'Umph!'  he ejaculated with an ugly look when he had come to the
end, 'I see.'  And he read it aloud:--

   'BY THESE PRESENTS, I COMMAND AND EMPOWER
    GILLES DE BERAULT, SIER DE BERAULT, TO
    SEEK FOR, HOLD, AND ARREST, AND DELIVER
    TO THE GOVERNOR OF THE BASTILLE THE BODY
    OF HENRI DE COCHEFORET, AND TO DO ALL
    ACTS AND THINGS AS SHALL BE NECESSARY
    TO EFFECT SUCH ARREST AND DELIVERY, FOR
    WHICH THESE SHALL BE HIS WARRANT.
    (Signed) THE CARDINAL DE RICHELIEU.'

When he had done--he read the signature with a peculiar
intonation--someone said softly, 'VIVE LE ROI!'  and there was a
moment's silence.  The sergeant lowered his lanthorn.  'Is it
enough?'  I said hoarsely, glaring from face to face.

The Lieutenant bowed stiffly.

'For me?'  he said.  'Quite, Monsieur.  I beg your pardon again.
I find that my first impressions were the correct ones.
Sergeant!  give the gentleman his papers!'  and, turning his
shoulder rudely, he tossed the commission to the sergeant, who
gave it to me, grinning.

I knew that the clown would not fight, and he had his men round
him; and I had no choice but to swallow the insult.  I put the
paper in my breast, with as much indifference as I could assume;
and as I did so, he gave a sharp order.  The troopers began to
form on the edge above; the men who had descended to climb the
bank again.

As the group behind him began to open and melt away, I caught
sight of a white robe in the middle of it.  The next moment,
appearing with a suddenness which was like a blow on the cheek to
me, Mademoiselle de Cocheforet glided forward towards me.  She
had a hood on her head, drawn low; and for a moment I could not
see her face, I forgot her brother's presence at my elbow, I
forgot other things, and, from habit and impulse rather than
calculation, I took a step forward to meet her; though my tongue
cleaved to the roof of my mouth, and I was dumb and trembling.

But she recoiled with such a look of white hate, of staring,
frozen-eyed abhorrence, that I stepped back as if she had indeed
struck me.  It did not need the words which accompanied the look
--the 'DO NOT TOUCH ME!'  which she hissed at me as she drew her
skirts together--to drive me to the farther edge of the hollow;
where I stood with clenched teeth, and nails driven into the
flesh, while she hung, sobbing tearless sobs, on her brother's
neck.



CHAPTER XII

THE ROAD TO PARIS

I remember hearing Marshal Bassompierre, who, of all the men
within my knowledge, had the widest experience, say that not
dangers but discomforts prove a man and show what he is; and that
the worst sores in life are caused by crumpled rose-leaves and
not by thorns.

I am inclined to think him right, for I remember that when I came
from my room on the morning after the arrest, and found hall and
parlour and passage empty, and all the common rooms of the house
deserted, and no meal laid; and when I divined anew from this
discovery the feeling of the house towards me--however natural
and to be expected--I remember that I felt as sharp a pang as
when, the night before, I had had to face discovery and open rage
and scorn.  I stood in the silent, empty parlour, and looked on
the familiar things with a sense of desolation, of something lost
and gone, which I could not understand.  The morning was grey and
cloudy, the air sharp, a shower was falling.  The rose-bushes
outside swayed in the wind, and inside, where I could remember
the hot sunshine lying on floor and table, the rain beat in and
stained the boards.  The inner door flapped and creaked on its
hinges.  I thought of other days and of meals I had taken there,
and of the scent of flowers; and I fled to the hall in despair.

But here, too, were no signs of life or company, no comfort, no
attendance.  The ashes of the logs, by whose blaze Mademoiselle
had told me the secret, lay on the hearth white and cold fit
emblem of the change that had taken place; and now and then a
drop of moisture, sliding down the great chimney, pattered among
them.  The main door stood open, as if the house had no longer
anything to guard.  The only living thing to be seen was a hound
which roamed about restlessly, now gazing at the empty hearth now
lying down with pricked cars and watchful eyes.  Some leaves,
which had been blown in by the wind, rustled in a corner.

I went out moodily into the garden and wandered down one path and
up another, looking at the dripping woods, and remembering
things, until I came to the stone seat.  On it, against the wall,
trickling with raindrops, and with a dead leaf half filling its
narrow neck, stood the pitcher of food.  I thought how much had
happened since Mademoiselle took her hand from it and the
sergeant's lanthorn disclosed it to me; and, sighing grimly, I
went in again through the parlour door.

A woman was on her knees, on the hearth kindling the belated
fire.  She had her back to me, and I stood a moment looking at
her doubtfully, wondering how she would bear herself and what she
would say to me.  Then she turned, and I started back, crying out
her name in horror--for it was Madame!  Madame de Cocheforet!

She was plainly dressed, and her childish face was wan and
piteous with weeping; but either the night had worn out her
passion and drained her tears, or some great exigency had given
her temporary calmness, for she was perfectly composed.  She
shivered as her eyes met mine, and she blinked as if a bright
light had been suddenly thrust before her; but that was all, and
she turned again to her task without speaking.

'Madame!  Madame!" I cried in a frenzy of distress.  'What is
this?'

'The servants would not do it,' she answered in a low but steady
voice.  'You are still our guest, Monsieur.'

'But I cannot suffer it!'  I cried.  'Madame de Cocheforet, I
will not--'

She raised her hand with a strange patient expression in her
face.

'Hush!  please,' she said.  'Hush!  you trouble me.'

The fire blazed up as she spoke, and she rose slowly from it, and
with a lingering look at it went out, leaving me to stand and
stare and listen in the middle of the floor.  Presently I heard
her coming back along the passage, and she entered bearing a tray
with wine and meat and bread.  She set it down on the table, and
with the same wan face, trembling always on the verge of tears,
she began to lay out the things.  The glasses clinked fitfully
against the plates as she handled them; the knives jarred with
one another.  And I stood by, trembling myself; and endured this
strange kind of penance.

She signed to me at last to sit down; and she went herself, and
stood in the garden doorway with her back to me.  I obeyed.  I
sat down.  But though I had eaten nothing since the afternoon of
the day before, I could not swallow.  I fumbled with my knife,
and drank; and grew hot and angry at this farce; and then looked
through the window at the dripping bushes, and the rain and the
distant sundial--and grew cold again.

Suddenly she turned round and came to my side.  'You do not eat,'
she said.

I threw down my knife, and sprang up in a frenzy of passion.
'MON DIEU!  Madame,' I cried, 'do you think that I have NO
heart?'

And then in a moment I knew what I had done, what a folly I had
committed.  For in a moment she was on her knees on the floor,
clasping my knees, pressing her wet cheeks to my rough clothes,
crying to me for mercy--for life!  life!  his life!  Oh, it was
horrible!  It was horrible to hear her gasping voice, to see her
fair hair falling over my mud-stained boots, to mark her slender
little form convulsed with sobs, to feel that it was a woman, a
gentlewoman, who thus abased herself at my feet!

'Oh, Madame!  Madame!'  I cried in my pain, 'I beg you to rise.
Rise, or I must go!'

'His life!  only his life!'  she moaned passionately.  'What had
he done to you--that you should hunt him down?  what have we done
to you that you should slay us?  Oh!  have mercy!  Have mercy!
Let him go, and we will pray for you, I and my sister will pray
for you, every morning and night of our lives.'

I was in terror lest someone should come and see her lying there,
and I stooped and tried to raise her.  But she only sank the
lower, until her tender little hands touched the rowels of my
spurs.  I dared not move, At last I took a sudden resolution.

'Listen, then, Madame!'  I said almost sternly, 'if you will not
rise.  You forget everything, both how I stand, and how small my
power is!  You forget that if I were to release your husband to-
day he would be seized within the hour by those who are still in
the village and who are watching every road--who have not ceased
to suspect my movements and my intentions.  You forget, I say my
circumstances--'

She cut me short on that word.  She sprang to her feet and faced
me.  One moment more and I should have said something to the
purpose.  But at that word she stood before me, white,
breathless, dishevelled, struggling for speech.

'Oh, yes, yes!'  she panted eagerly.  'I know--I know!'  And she
thrust her hand into her bosom and plucked something out and gave
it to me--forced it upon me.  'I know--I know!'  she said again.
'Take it, and God reward you, Monsieur!  God reward you!  We give
it freely--freely and thankfully!'

I stood and looked at her and it; and slowly I froze.  She had
given me the packet--the packet I had restored to Mademoiselle--
the parcel of jewels.  I weighed it in my hands, and my heart
grew hard again, for I knew that this was Mademoiselle's doing;
that it was she who, mistrusting the effect of Madame's tears and
prayers, had armed her with this last weapon--this dirty bribe.
I flung it down on the table among the plates.

'Madame!'  I cried ruthlessly, all my pity changed to anger, 'you
mistake me altogether!  I have heard hard words enough in the
last twenty-four hours, and I know what you think of me!  But you
have yet to learn that I have never done one thing.  I have never
turned traitor to the hand that employed me, nor sold my own
side!  When I do so for a treasure ten times the worth of that,
may my hand rot off!'

She sank on a seat with a moan of despair; and precisely at that
moment M. de Cocheforet opened the door and came in.  Over his
shoulder I had a glimpse of Mademoiselle's proud face, a little
whiter than of yore, with dark marks under the eyes, but like
Satan's for coldness.

'What is this?'  he said, frowning, as his eyes lighted on
Madame.

'It is--that we start at eleven o'clock, Monsieur,' I answered,
bowing curtly.  And I went out by the other door.

.  .  .  .  .

That I might not be present at their parting I remained in the
garden until the hour I had appointed was well past; and then,
without entering the house, I went to the stable entrance.  Here
I found all in readiness, the two troopers whose company I had
requisitioned as far as Auch, already in the saddle, my own two
knaves waiting with my sorrel and M. de Cocheforet's chestnut.
Another horse was being led up and down by Louis, and, alas!  my
heart moved at the sight, for it bore a lady's saddle.  We were
to have company then.  Was it Madame who meant to come with us,
or Mademoiselle?  And how far?  To Auch?

I suppose that they had set some kind of a watch on me, for as I
walked up M. de Cocheforet and his sister came out of the house;
he with a pale face and bright eyes, and a twitching visible in
his cheek--though he still affected a jaunty bearing; she wearing
a black mask.

'Mademoiselle accompanies us?'  I said formally.

'With your permission, Monsieur,' he answered with bitter
politeness.  But I saw that he was choking with emotion; he had
just parted from his wife, and I turned away.

When we were all mounted he looked at me.

'Perhaps--as you have my parole, you will permit me to ride
alone?'  he said with a little hesitation.  'And--'

'Without me!'  I rejoined keenly.  'Assuredly, so far as is
possible.'

Accordingly I directed the troopers to ride before him, keeping
out of earshot, while my two men followed him at a little
distance with their carbines on their knees.  Last of all, I rode
myself with my eyes open and a pistol loose in my holster.  M. de
Cocheforet muttered a sneer at so many precautions and the
mountain made of his request; but I had not done so much and come
so far, I had not faced scorn and insults to be cheated of my
prize at last; and aware that until we were beyond Auch there
must be hourly and pressing danger of a rescue, I was determined
that he who should wrest my prisoner from me should pay dearly
for it.  Only pride, and, perhaps, in a degree also, appetite for
a fight, had prevented me borrowing ten troopers instead of two.

As was wont I looked with a lingering eye and many memories at
the little bridge, the narrow woodland path, the first roofs of
the village; all now familiar, all seen for the last time.  Up
the brook a party of soldiers were dragging for the captain's
body.  A furlong farther on, a cottage, burned by some
carelessness in the night, lay a heap of black ashes.  Louis ran
beside us weeping; the last brown leaves fluttered down in
showers.  And between my eyes and all, the slow steady rain fell
and fell.  And so I left Cocheforet.

Louis went with us to a point a mile beyond the village, and
there stood and saw us go, cursing me furiously as I passed.
Looking back when we had ridden on, I still saw him standing, and
after a moment's hesitation I rode back to him.

'Listen, fool!'  I said, cutting him short in the midst of his
mowing and snarling, 'and give this message to your mistress.
Tell her from me that it will be with her husband as it was with
M. de Regnier, when he fell into the hands of his enemy--no
better and no worse.'

'You want to kill her, too, I suppose?'  he answered glowering at
me.

'No, fool, I want to save her,' I retorted wrathfully.  'Tell her
that, just that and no more, and you will see the result.'

'I shall not,' he said sullenly.  'A message from you indeed!'
And he spat on the ground.

'Then on your head be it,' I answered solemnly, And I turned my
horse's head and galloped fast after the others.  But I felt sure
that he would report what I had said, if it were only out of
curiosity; and it would be strange if Madame, a gentlewoman of
the south, bred among old family traditions, did not understand
the reference.

And so we began our journey; sadly, under dripping trees and a
leaden sky.  The country we had to traverse was the same I had
trodden on the last day of my march southwards, but the passage
of a month had changed the face of everything.  Green dells,
where springs welling out of the chalk had once made of the leafy
bottom a fairies' home, strewn with delicate ferns and hung with
mosses, were now swamps into which our horses sank to the
fetlock.  Sunny brews, whence I had viewed the champaign and
traced my forward path, had become bare, wind-swept ridges.  The
beech woods that had glowed with ruddy light were naked now; mere
black trunks and rigid arms pointing to heaven.  An earthy smell
filled the air; a hundred paces away a wall of mist closed the
view.  We plodded on sadly up hill and down hill, now fording
brooks, already stained with flood-water, now crossing barren
heaths.  But up hill or down hill, whatever the outlook, I was
never permitted to forget that I was the jailor, the ogre, the
villain; that I, riding behind in my loneliness, was the blight
on all--the death-spot.  True, I was behind the others--I escaped
their eyes.  But there was not a line of Mademoiselle's figure
that did not speak scorn to me; not a turn of head that did not
seem to say, 'Oh, God, that such a thing should breathe.'

I had only speech with her once during the day, and that was on
the last ridge before we went down into the valley to climb up
again to Auch.  The rain had ceased; the sun, near its setting,
shone faintly; for a few moments we stood on the brow and looked
southwards while we breathed the horses.  The mist lay like a
pall on the country we had traversed; but beyond and above it,
gleaming pearl-like in the level rays, the line of the mountains
stood up like a land of enchantment, soft, radiant, wonderful!--
or like one of those castles on the Hill of Glass of which the
old romances tell us.  I forgot for an instant how we were
placed, and I cried to my neighbour that it was the fairest
pageant I had ever seen.

She--it was Mademoiselle, and she had taken off her mask--cast
one look at me in answer; only one, but it conveyed disgust and
loathing so unspeakable that scorn beside them would have been a
gift.  I reined in my horse as if she had struck me, and felt
myself go first hot and then cold under her eyes.  Then she
looked another way.

But I did not forget the lesson; and after that I avoided her
more sedulously than before.  We lay that night at Auch, and I
gave M. de Cocheforet the utmost liberty, even permitting him to
go out and return at his will.  In the morning, believing that on
the farther side of Auch we ran little risk of attack, I
dismissed the two dragoons, and an hour after sunrise we set out
again.  The day was dry and cold, the weather more promising.  I
proposed to go by way of Lectoure, crossing the Garonne at Agen;
and I thought that, with roads continually improving as we moved
northwards, we should be able to make good progress before night.
My two men rode first, I came last by myself.

Our way lay down the valley of the Gers, under poplars and by
long rows of willows, and presently the sun came out and warmed
us.  Unfortunately the rain of the day before had swollen the
brooks which crossed our path, and we more than once had a
difficulty in fording them.  Noon found us little more than half
way to Lectoure, and I was growing each minute more impatient
when our road, which had for a little while left the river bank,
dropped down to it again, and I saw before us another crossing,
half ford half slough.  My men tried it gingerly and gave back
and tried it again in another place; and finally, just as
Mademoiselle and her brother came up to them, floundered through
and sprang slantwise up the farther bank.

The delay had been long enough to bring me, with no good will of
my own, close upon the Cocheforets.  Mademoiselle's horse made a
little business of the place, and in the result we entered the
water almost together; and I crossed close on her heels.  The
bank on either side was steep; while crossing we could see
neither before nor behind.  But at the moment I thought nothing
of this nor of her delay; and I was following her quite at my
leisure and picking my way, when the sudden report of a carbine,
a second report, and a yell of alarm in front thrilled me
through.

On the instant, while the sound was still in my ears, I saw it
all.  Like a hot iron piercing my brain the truth flashed into my
mind.  We were attacked!  We were attacked, and I was here
helpless in this pit, this trap!  The loss of a second while I
fumbled here, Mademoiselle's horse barring the way, might be
fatal.

There was but one way.  I turned my horse straight at the steep
bank, and he breasted it.  One moment he hung as if he must fall
back.  Then, with a snort of terror and a desperate bound, he
topped it, and gained the level, trembling and snorting.

Seventy paces away on the road lay one of my men.  He had fallen,
horse and man, and lay still.  Near him, with his back against a
bank, stood his fellow, on foot, pressed by four horsemen, and
shouting.  As my eye lighted on the scene he let fly with a
carbine, and dropped one.  I clutched a pistol from my holster
and seized my horse by the head.  I might save the man yet, I
shouted to him to encourage him, and was driving in my spurs to
second my voice, when a sudden vicious blow, swift and
unexpected, struck the pistol from my hand.

I made a snatch at it as it fell, but missed it, and before I
could recover myself, Mademoiselle thrust her horse furiously
against mine, and with her riding-whip lashed the sorrel across
the ears.  As the horse reared up madly, I had a glimpse of her
eyes flashing hate through her mask; of her hand again uplifted;
the next moment, I was down in the road, ingloriously unhorsed,
the sorrel was galloping away, and her horse, scared in its turn,
was plunging unmanageably a score of paces from me.

But for that I think that she would have trampled on me.  As it
was, I was free to rise, and draw, and in a twinkling was running
towards the fighters.  All had happened in a few seconds.  My man
was still defending himself, the smoke of the carbine had
scarcely risen.  I sprang across a fallen tree that intervened,
and at the same moment two of the men detached themselves and
rode to meet me.  One, whom I took to be the leader, was masked.
He came furiously at me to ride me down, but I leaped aside
nimbly, and, evading him, rushed at the other, and scaring his
horse, so that he dropped his point, cut him across the shoulder,
before he could guard himself.  He plunged away, cursing and
trying to hold in his horse, and I turned to meet the masked man.

'You villain!'  he cried, riding at me again.  This time he
manoeuvred his horse so skilfully that I was hard put to it to
prevent him knocking me down; while I could not with all my
efforts reach him to hurt him.  'Surrender, will you?'  he cried,
'you bloodhound!'

I wounded him slightly in the knee for answer; before I could do
more his companion came back, and the two set upon me, slashing
at my head so furiously and towering above me with so great an
advantage that it was all I could do to guard it.  I was soon
glad to fall back against the bank.  In this sort of conflict my
rapier would have been of little use, but fortunately I had armed
myself before I left Paris with a cut-and-thrust sword for the
road; and though my mastery of the weapon was not on a par with
my rapier play, I was able to fend off their cuts, and by an
occasional prick keep the horses at a distance.  Still, they
swore and cut at me; and it was trying work.  A little delay
might enable the other man to come to their help, or
Mademoiselle, for all I knew, might shoot me with my own pistol.
I was unfeignedly glad when a lucky parade sent the masked man's
sword flying across the road.  On that he pushed his horse
recklessly at me, spurring it without mercy; but the animal,
which I had several times touched, reared up instead, and threw
him at the very moment that I wounded his companion a second time
in the arm, and made him give back.

The scene was now changed.  The man in the mask staggered to his
feet, and felt stupidly for a pistol.  But he could not find one,
and he was in no state to use it if he had.  He reeled helplessly
to the bank and leaned against it.  The man I had wounded was in
scarcely better condition.  He retreated before me, but in a
moment, losing courage, let drop his sword, and, wheeling round,
cantered off, clinging to his pommel.  There remained only the
fellow engaged with my man, and I turned to see how they were
getting on.  They were standing to take breath, so I ran towards
them; but on seeing me coming, this rascal, too, whipped round
his horse and disappeared in the wood, and left us victors.

The first thing I did--and I remember it to this day with
pleasure--was to plunge my hand into my pocket, take out half of
all the money I had in the world, and press it on the man who had
fought for me so stoutly.  In my joy I could have kissed him!  It
was not only that I had escaped defeat by the skin of my teeth--
and his good sword; but I knew, and felt, and thrilled with the
knowledge, that the fight had, in a sense, redeemed my character.
He was wounded in two places, and I had a scratch or two, and had
lost my horse; and my other poor fellow was dead as a herring.
But, speaking for myself, I would have spent half the blood in my
body to purchase the feeling with which I turned back to speak to
M. de Cocheforet and his sister.  Mademoiselle had dismounted,
and with her face averted and her mask pushed on one side, was
openly weeping.  Her brother, who had faithfully kept his place
by the ford from the beginning of the fight to the end, met me
with raised eyebrows and a peculiar smile.

'Acknowledge my virtue,' he said airily.  'I am here, M. de
Berault; which is more than can be said of the two gentlemen who
have just ridden off.'

'Yes,' I answered with a touch of bitterness.  'I wish that they
had not shot my poor man before they went.'

He shrugged his shoulders.

'They were my friends,' he said.  'You must not expect me to
blame them.  But that is not all, M. de Berault.'

'No,' I said, wiping my sword.  'There is this gentleman in the
mask.'  And I turned to go towards him.

'M. de Berault!'  Cocheforet called after me, his tone strained
and abrupt.

I stood.  'Pardon?'  I said, turning,

'That gentleman?'  he said, hesitating and looking at me
doubtfully.  'Have you considered what will happen to him if you
give him up to the authorities?'

'Who is he?'  I asked sharply.

'That is rather a delicate question,' he answered frowning.

'Not for me,' I replied brutally, 'since he is in my power.  If
he will take off his mask I shall know better what I intend to do
with him.'

The stranger had lost his hat in his fall, and his fair hair,
stained with dust, hung in curls on his shoulders.  He was a tall
man, of a slender, handsome presence, and, though his dress was
plain and almost rough, I espied a splendid jewel on his hand,
and fancied that I detected other signs of high quality.  He
still lay against the bank in a half-swooning condition, and
seemed unconscious of my scrutiny.

'Should I know him if he unmasked?'  I said suddenly, a new idea
in my head.

'You would,' M. de Cocheforet answered.

'And?'

'It would be bad for everyone.'

'Ho!  ho!'  I replied softly, looking hard first at my old
prisoner, and then at my new one.  'Then--what do you wish me to
do?'

'Leave him here!'  M. de Cocheforet answered, his face flushed,
the pulse in his cheek beating.

I had known him for a man of perfect honour before, and trusted
him.  But this evident earnest anxiety on behalf of his friend
touched me not a little.  Besides, I knew that I was treading on
slippery ground:  that it behoved me to be careful.

'I will do it,' I said after a moment's reflection.  'He will
play me no tricks, I suppose?  A letter of--'

'MON DIEU, no!  He will understand,' Cocheforet answered eagerly.
'You will not repent it.  Let us be going.'

'Well, but my horse?'  I said, somewhat taken aback by this
extreme haste.  'How am I to--'

'We shall overtake it,' he assured me.  'It will have kept the
road.  Lectoure is no more than a league from here, and we can
give orders there to have these two fetched and buried.'

I had nothing to gain by demurring, and so, after another word or
two, it was arranged.  We picked up what we had dropped, M. de
Cocheforet helped his sister to mount, and within five minutes we
were gone.  Casting a glance back from the skirts of the wood I
fancied that I saw the masked man straighten himself and turn to
look after us, but the leaves were beginning to intervene, the
distance may have cheated me.  And yet I was not indisposed to
think the unknown a trifle more observant, and a little less
seriously hurt, than he seemed.



CHAPTER XIII

AT THE FINGER-POST

Through all, it will have been noticed, Mademoiselle had not
spoken to me, nor said one word, good or bad.  She had played her
part grimly, had taken defeat in silence if with tears, had tried
neither prayer nor defence nor apology.  And the fact that the
fight was now over, and the scene left behind, made no difference
in her conduct.  She kept her face studiously turned from me, and
affected to ignore my presence.  I caught my horse feeding by the
roadside, a furlong forward, and mounted and fell into place
behind the two, as in the morning.  And just as we had plodded on
then in silence we plodded on now; almost as if nothing had
happened; while I wondered at the unfathomable ways of women, and
marvelled that she could take part in such an incident and remain
unchanged.

Yet, though she strove to hide it, it had made a change in her.
Though her mask served her well it could not entirely hide her
emotions; and by-and-by I marked that her head drooped, that she
rode listlessly, that the lines of her figure were altered.  I
noticed that she had flung away, or furtively dropped, her
riding-whip; and I began to understand that, far from the fight
having set me in my former place, to the old hatred of me were
now added shame and vexation on her own account; shame that she
had so lowered herself, even to save her brother, vexation that
defeat had been her only reward.

Of this I saw a sign at Lectoure, where the inn had but one
common room and we must all dine in company.  I secured for them
a table by the fire, and leaving them standing by it, retired
myself to a smaller one near the door.  There were no other
guests; which made the separation between us more marked.  M. de
Cocheforet seemed to feel this.  He shrugged his shoulders and
looked across the room at me with a smile half sad half comical.
But Mademoiselle was implacable.  She had taken off her mask, and
her face was like stone.  Once, only once during the meal, I saw
a change come over her.  She coloured, I suppose at her thoughts,
until her face flamed from brow to chin.  I watched the blush
spread and spread; and then she slowly and proudly turned her
shoulder to me and looked through the window at the shabby
street.

I suppose that she and her brother had both built on this
attempt, which must have been arranged at Auch.  For when we went
on in the afternoon, I marked a change in them.  They rode like
people resigned to the worst.  The grey realities of the
position, the dreary future began to hang like a mist before
their eyes, began to tinge the landscape with sadness, robbed
even the sunset of its colours.  With each hour Monsieur's
spirits flagged and his speech became less frequent; until
presently when the light was nearly gone and the dusk was round
us the brother and sister rode hand in hand, silent, gloomy, one
at least of them weeping.  The cold shadow of the Cardinal, of
Paris, of the scaffold fell on them, and chilled them.  As the
mountains which they had known all their lives sank and faded
behind us, and we entered on the wide, low valley of the Garonne,
their hopes sank and faded also--sank to the dead level of
despair.  Surrounded by guards, a mark for curious glances, with
pride for a companion, M. de Cocheforet could have borne himself
bravely; doubtless would bear himself bravely still when the end
came.  But almost alone, moving forward through the grey evening
to a prison, with so many measured days before him, and nothing
to exhilarate or anger--in this condition it was little wonder if
he felt, and betrayed that he felt, the blood run slow in his
veins; if he thought more of the weeping wife and ruined home
which he had left behind him than of the cause in which he had
spent himself.

But God knows, they had no monopoly of gloom.  I felt almost as
sad myself.  Long before sunset the flush of triumph, the heat of
battle, which had warmed my heart at noon, were gone, giving
place to a chill dissatisfaction, a nausea, a despondency such as
I have known follow a long night at the tables.  Hitherto there
had been difficulties to be overcome, risks to be run, doubts
about the end.  Now the end was certain and very near; so near
that it filled all the prospect.  One hour of triumph I might
have, and would have, and I hugged the thought of it as a gambler
hugs his last stake, planning the place and time and mode, and
trying to occupy myself wholly with it.  But the price?  Alas!
that too would intrude itself, and more frequently as the evening
waned; so that as I marked this or that thing by the road, which
I could recall passing on my journey south with thoughts so
different, with plans that now seemed so very, very old, I asked
myself grimly if this were really I; if this were Gil de Berault,
known at Zaton's, PREMIER JOUEUR, or some Don Quichotte from
Castille, tilting at windmills and taking barbers' bowls for
gold.

We reached Agen very late that evening, after groping our way
through a by-road near the river, set with holes and willow-
stools and frog-spawn--a place no better than a slough; so that
after it the great fires and lights at the Blue Maid seemed like
a glimpse of a new world, and in a twinkling put something of
life and spirits into two at least of us.  There was queer talk
round the hearth here, of doings in Paris, of a stir against the
Cardinal with the Queen-mother at bottom, and of grounded
expectations that something might this time come of it.  But the
landlord pooh-poohed the idea; and I more than agreed with him.
Even M. de Cocheforet, who was at first inclined to build on it,
gave up hope when he heard that it came only by way of Montauban;
whence--since its reduction the year before--all sort of CANARDS
against the Cardinal were always on the wing.

'They kill him about once a month,' our host said with a grin.
'Sometimes it is MONSIEUR is to prove a match for him, sometimes
CESAR MONSIEUR--the Duke of Vendome, you understand--and
sometimes the Queen-mother.  But since M. de Chalais and the
Marshal made a mess of it and paid forfeit, I pin my faith to his
Eminence--that is his new title, they tell me.'

'Things are quiet round here?' I asked.

'Perfectly.  Since the Languedoc business came to an end, all
goes well,' he answered.

Mademoiselle had retired on our arrival, so that her brother and
I were for an hour or two this evening thrown together.  I left
him at liberty to separate himself from me if he pleased, but he
did not use the opportunity.  A kind of comradeship, rendered
piquant by our peculiar relations, had begun to spring up between
us.  He seemed to take an odd pleasure in my company, more than
once rallied me on my post of jailor, would ask humorously if he
might do this or that; and once even inquired what I should do if
he broke his parole.

'Or take it this way,' he continued flippantly, 'Suppose I had
struck you in the back this evening in that cursed swamp by the
river, M. de Berault?  What then!  PARDIEU, I am astonished at
myself that I did not do it.  I could have been in Montauban
within twenty-four hours, and found fifty hiding-places and no
one the wiser.'

'Except your sister,' I said quietly.

He made a wry face.  'Yes,' he said, 'I am afraid that I must
have stabbed her too, to preserve my self-respect.  You are
right.'  And he fell into a reverie which held him for a few
minutes.  Then I found him looking at me with a kind of frank
perplexity that invited question.

'What is it?'  I said.

'You have fought a great many duels?'

'Yes,' I said.

'Did you ever strike a foul blow in one?'

'Never,' I answered.  'Why do you ask?'

'Well, because I--wanted to confirm an impression.  To be frank,
M. de Berault, I seem to see in you two men.

'Two men?'

'Yes, two men.  One, the man who captured me; the other, the man
who let my friend go free to-day.'

'It surprised you that I let him go?  That was prudence, M. de
Cocheforet,' I replied.  'I am an old gambler.  I know when the
stakes are too high for me.  The man who caught a lion in his
wolf-pit had no great catch.'

'No, that is true,' he answered smiling, 'And yet--I find two men
in your skin.'

'I daresay that there are two in most men's skins,' I answered
with a sigh.  'But not always together.  Sometimes one is there,
and sometimes the other.'

'How does the one like taking up the other's work?'  he asked
keenly.

I shrugged my shoulders.  'That is as may be,' I said.  'You do
not take an estate without the debts.'

He did not answer for a moment, and I fancied that his thoughts
had reverted to his own case.  But on a sudden he looked at me
again.  'Will you answer a question, M. de Berault?'  he said
winningly.

'Perhaps,' I replied.

'Then tell me--it is a tale I am sure worth the telling.  What
was it that, in a very evil hour for me, sent you in search of
me?'

'My Lord Cardinal,' I answered

'I did not ask who,' he replied drily.  'I asked, what.  You had
no grudge against me?'

'No.'

'No knowledge of me?'

'No.'

'Then what on earth induced you to do it?  Heavens!  man,' he
continued bluntly, and speaking with greater freedom than he had
before used, 'Nature never intended you for a tipstaff.  What was
it then?'

I rose.  It was very late, and the room was empty, the fire low.

'I will tell you--to-morrow,' I said.  'I shall have something to
say to you then, of which that will be part.'

He looked at me in great astonishment, and with a little
suspicion.  But I called for a light, and by going at once to
bed, cut short his questions.  In the morning we did not meet
until it was time to start.

Those who know the south road to Agen, and how the vineyards rise
in terraces north of the town, one level of red earth above
another, green in summer, but in late autumn bare and stony, may
remember a particular place where the road, two leagues from the
town, runs up a steep hill.  At the top of the hill four roads
meet; and there, plain to be seen against the sky, is a finger-
post indicating which way leads to Bordeaux, and which to old
tiled Montauban, and which to Perigueux.

This hill had impressed me greatly on my journey south; perhaps
because I had enjoyed from it my first extended view of the
Garonne Valley, and had there felt myself on the verge of the
south country where my mission lay.  It had taken root in my
memory, so that I had come to look upon its bare rounded head,
with the guide-post and the four roads, as the first outpost of
Paris, as the first sign of return to the old life.

Now for two days I had been looking forward to seeing it again,
That long stretch of road would do admirably for something I had
in my mind.  That sign-post, with the roads pointing north,
south, east, and west--could there be a better place for meetings
and partings?

We came to the bottom of the ascent about an hour before noon, M.
de Cocheforet, Mademoiselle, and I.  We had reversed the order of
yesterday, and I rode ahead; they came after at their leisure.
Now, at the foot of the hill I stopped, and letting Mademoiselle
pass on, detained M. de Cocheforet by a gesture.

'Pardon me, one moment,' I said.  'I want to ask a favour.'

He looked at me somewhat fretfully; with a gleam of wildness in
his eyes that betrayed how the iron was, little by little, eating
into his heart.  He had started after breakfast as gaily as a
bridegroom, but gradually he had sunk below himself; and now he
had much ado to curb his impatience.

'Of me?'  he said bitterly.  'What is it?'

'I wish to have a few words with Mademoiselle--alone,' I said.

'Alone?'  he exclaimed in astonishment,

'Yes,' I replied, without blenching, though his face grew dark.
'For the matter of that, you can be within call all the time, if
you please.  But I have a reason for wishing to ride a little way
with her.'

'To tell her something?'

'Yes.'

'Then you can tell it to me,' he retorted suspiciously.
'Mademoiselle, I will answer for it, has no desire to--'

'See me or speak to me?  No,' I said.  'I can understand that.
Yet I want to speak to her.'

'Very well, you can speak in my presence,' he answered rudely.
'If that be all, let us ride on and join her.'  And he made a
movement as if to do so.

'That will not do, M. de Cocheforet,' I said firmly, stopping him
with my hand.  'Let me beg you to be more complaisant.  It is a
small thing I ask, a very small thing; but I swear to you that if
Mademoiselle does not grant it, she will repent it all her life.'

He looked at me, his face growing darker and darker.

'Fine words,' he said, with a sneer.  'Yet I fancy I understand
them.'  And then with a passionate oath he broke out.  'But I
will not have it!  I have not been blind, M. de Berault, and I
understand.  But I will not have it.  I will have no such Judas
bargain made.  PARDIEU!  do you think I could suffer it and show
my face again?'

'I don't know what you mean,' I said, restraining myself with
difficulty.  I could have struck the fool.

'But I know what you mean,' he replied, in a tone of suppressed
rage.  'You would have her sell herself; sell herself to you to
save me.  And you would have me stand by and see the thing done.
No, sir, never; never, though I go to the wheel.  I will die a
gentleman, if I have lived a fool.'

'I think that you will do the one as certainly as you have done
the other,' I retorted in my exasperation.  And yet I admired
him.

'Oh, I am not quite a fool!'  he cried, scowling at me.  'I have
used my eyes.'

'Then be good enough to favour me with your ears!'  I answered
drily.  'For just a moment.  And listen when I say that no such
bargain has ever crossed my mind.  You were kind enough to think
well of me last night, M. de Cocheforet.  Why should the mention
of Mademoiselle in a moment change your opinion?  I wish simply
to speak to her.  I have nothing to ask from her, nothing to
expect from her, either favour or anything else.  What I say she
will doubtless tell you.  CIEL man!  what harm can I do to her,
in the road in your sight?'

He looked at me sullenly, his face still flushed, his eyes
suspicious.

'What do you want to say to her?'  he asked jealously.  He was
quite unlike himself.  His airy nonchalance, his careless gaiety
were gone.

'You know what I do not want to say to her, M. de Cocheforet,' I
answered.  'That should be enough.'

He glowered at me a moment, still ill content.  Then, without a
word, be made me a gesture to go to her.

She had halted a score of paces away; wondering, doubtless, what
was on foot.  I rode towards her.  She wore her mask, so that I
missed the expression of her face as I approached; but the manner
in which she turned her horse's head uncompromisingly towards her
brother and looked past me was full of meaning.  I felt the
ground suddenly cut from under me.  I saluted her, trembling.

'Mademoiselle,' I said, 'will you grant me the privilege of your
company for a few minutes as we ride?'

'To what purpose?'  she answered; surely, in the coldest voice in
which a woman ever spoke to a man.

'That I may explain to you a great many things you do not
understand,' I murmured.

'I prefer to be in the dark,' she replied.  And her manner was
more cruel than her words.

'But, Mademoiselle,' I pleaded--I would not be discouraged--'you
told me one day, not so long ago, that you would never judge me
hastily again.'

'Facts judge you, not I,' she answered icily.  'I am not
sufficiently on a level with you to be able to judge you--I thank
God.'

I shivered though the sun was on me, and the hollow where we
stood was warm.

'Still, once before you thought the same,' I exclaimed after a
pause, 'and afterwards you found that you had been wrong.  It may
be so again, Mademoiselle.'

'Impossible,' she said.

That stung me.

'No,' I cried.  'It is not impossible.  It is you who are
impossible.  It is you who are heartless, Mademoiselle.  I have
done much in the last three days to make things lighter for you,
much to make things more easy; now I ask you to do something in
return which can cost you nothing.'

'Nothing?'  she answered slowly--and she looked at me; and her
eyes and her voice cut me as if they had been knives.  'Nothing?
Do you think, Monsieur, it costs me nothing to lose my self-
respect, as I do with every word I speak to you?  Do you think it
costs me nothing to be here when I feel every look you cast upon
me an insult, every breath I take in your presence a
contamination?  Nothing, Monsieur?'  she continued with bitter
irony.  'Nay, something!  But something which I could not hope to
make clear to you.'

I sat for a moment confounded, quivering with pain.  It had been
one thing to feel that she hated and scorned me, to know that the
trust and confidence which she had begun to place in me were
transformed to loathing.  It was another to listen to her hard,
pitiless words, to change colour under the lash of her gibing
tongue.  For a moment I could not find voice to answer her.  Then
I pointed to M. de Cocheforet.

'Do you love him?'  I said hoarsely, roughly.  The gibing tone
had passed from her voice to mine.

She did not answer.

'Because if you do you will let me tell my tale.  Say no, but
once more, Mademoiselle--I am only human--and I go.  And you will
repent it all your life.'

I had done better had I taken that tone from the beginning.  She
winced, her head dropped, she seemed to grow smaller.  All in a
moment, as it were, her pride collapsed.

'I will hear you,' she murmured.

'Then we will ride on, if you please,' I said keeping the
advantage I had gained.  'You need not fear.  Your brother will
follow.'

I caught hold of her rein and turned her horse, and she suffered
it without demur; and in a moment we were pacing side by side,
with the long straight road before us.  At the end where it
topped the hill, I could see the finger-post, two faint black
lines against the sky.  When we reached that--involuntarily I
checked my horse and made it move more slowly.

'Well, sir?'  she said impatiently.  And her figure shook as with
cold.

'It is a tale I desire to tell you, Mademoiselle,' I answered.
'Perhaps I may seem to begin a long way off, but before I end I
promise to interest you.  Two months ago there was living in
Paris a man--perhaps a bad man--at any rate, by common report a
hard man; a man with a peculiar reputation.'

She turned on me suddenly, her eyes gleaming through her mask.

'Oh, Monsieur, spare me this!'  she said, quietly scornful.  'I
will take it for granted.'

'Very well,' I replied steadfastly.  'Good or bad, he one day, in
defiance of the Cardinal's edict against duelling, fought with a
young Englishman behind St Jacques' Church.  The Englishman had
influence, the person of whom I speak had none, and an
indifferent name; he was arrested, thrown into the Chatelet, cast
for death, left for days to face death.  At last an offer was
made to him.  If he would seek out and deliver up another man, an
outlaw with a price upon his head, he should himself go free.'

I paused and drew a deep breath.  Then I continued, looking not
at her, but into the distance, and speaking slowly.

'Mademoiselle, it seems easy now to say what course he should
have chosen.  It seems hard now to find excuses for him.  But
there was one thing which I plead for him.  The task he was asked
to undertake was a dangerous one.  He risked, he knew that he
must risk, and the event proved him to be right, his life against
the life of this unknown man.  And one thing more; time was
before him.  The outlaw might be taken by another, might be
killed, might die, might--But there, Mademoiselle, we know what
answer this person made.  He took the baser course, and on his
honour, on his parole, with money supplied to him, he went free;
free on the condition that he delivered up this other man.'

I paused again, but I did not dare to look at her; and after a
moment of silence I resumed.

'Some portion of the second half of the story you know,
Mademoiselle; but not all.  Suffice it that this man came down to
a remote village, and there at risk, but, Heaven knows, basely
enough, found his way into his victim's home.  Once there,
however, his heart began to fail him.  Had he found the house
garrisoned by men, he might have pressed to his end with little
remorse.  But he found there only two helpless loyal women; and I
say again that from the first hour of his entrance he sickened at
the work which he had in hand, the work which ill-fortune had
laid upon him.  Still he pursued it.  He had given his word; and
if there was one tradition of his race which this man had never
broken, it was that of fidelity to his side--to the man who paid
him.  But he pursued it with only half his mind, in great misery,
if you will believe me; sometimes in agonies of shame.
Gradually, however, almost against his will, the drama worked
itself out before him, until he needed only one thing.

I looked at Mademoiselle, trembling.  But her head was averted:
I could gather nothing from the outlines of her form; and I went
on.

'Do not misunderstand me,' I said in a lower voice.  'Do not
misunderstand what I am going to say next.  This is no love-
story; and can have no ending such as romancers love to set to
their tales.  But I am bound to mention, Mademoiselle, that this
man who had lived almost all his life about inns and eating-
houses and at the gaming-tables met here for the first time for
years a good woman, and learned by the light of her loyalty and
devotion to see what his life had been, and what was the real
nature of the work he was doing.  I think--nay, I know,' I
continued, 'that it added a hundredfold to his misery that when
he learned at last the secret he had come to surprise, he learned
it from her lips, and in such a way that, had he felt no shame,
Hell could have been no place for him.  But in one thing I hope
she misjudged him.  She thought, and had reason to think, that
the moment he knew her secret he went out, not even closing the
door, and used it.  But the truth was that while her words were
still in his ears news came to him that others had the secret;
and had he not gone out on the instant and done what he did, and
forestalled them, M. de Cocheforet would have been taken, but by
others.'

Mademoiselle broke her long silence so suddenly that her horse
sprang forward.

'Would to Heaven he had!'  she wailed.

'Been taken by others?'  I exclaimed, startled out of my false
composure.

'Oh, yes, yes!'  she answered with a passionate gesture.  'Why
did you not tell me?  Why did you not confess to me, sir, even at
the last moment?  But, no more!  No more!'  she continued in a
piteous voice; and she tried to urge her horse forward.  'I have
heard enough.  You are racking my heart, M. de Berault.  Some day
I will ask God to give me strength to forgive you.'

'But you have not heard me out,' I said.

'I will hear no more,' she answered in a voice she vainly strove
to render steady.  'To what end?  Can I say more than I have
said?  Or did you think that I could forgive you now--with him
behind us going to his death?  Oh, no, no!'  she continued.
'Leave me!  I implore you to leave me, sir.  I am not well.'

She drooped over her horse's neck as she spoke, and began to weep
so passionately that the tears ran down her cheeks under her
mask, and fell and sparkled like dew on the mane; while her sobs
shook her so that I thought she must fall.  I stretched out my
hand instinctively to give her help, but she shrank from me.
'No!'  she gasped, between her sobs.  'Do not touch me.  There is
too much between us.'

'Yet there must be one thing more between us,' I answered firmly.
'You must listen to me a little longer whether you will or no,
Mademoiselle:  for the love you bear to your brother.  There is
one course still open to me by which I may redeem my honour; and
it has been in my mind for some time back to take that course.
'To-day, I am thankful to say, I can take it cheerfully, if not
without regret; with a steadfast heart, if no light one.
Mademoiselle,' I continued earnestly, feeling none of the
triumph, none of the vanity, none of the elation I had foreseen,
but only simple joy in the joy I could give her, 'I thank God
that it IS still in my power to undo what I have done:  that it
is still in my power to go back to him who sent me, and telling
him that I have changed my mind, and will bear my own burdens, to
pay the penalty.'

We were within a hundred paces of the top and the finger-post.
She cried out wildly that she did not understand.  'What is it
you--you--have just said?'  she murmured.  'I cannot hear.'  And
she began to fumble with the ribbon of her mask.

'Only this, Mademoiselle,' I answered gently.  'I give your
brother back his word, his parole.  From this moment he is free
to go whither he pleases.  Here, where we stand, four roads meet.
That to the right goes to Montauban, where you have doubtless
friends, and can lie hid for a time.  Or that to the left leads
to Bordeaux, where you can take ship if you please.  And in a
word, Mademoiselle,' I continued, ending a little feebly, 'I hope
that your troubles are now over.'

She turned her face to me--we had both come to a standstill--and
plucked at the fastenings of her mask.  But her trembling fingers
had knotted the string, and in a moment she dropped her hand with
a cry of despair.  'But you?  You?'  she wailed in a voice so
changed that I should not have known it for hers.  'What will you
do?  I do not understand, Monsieur.'

'There is a third road,' I answered.  'It leads to Paris.  That
is my road, Mademoiselle.  We part here.'

'But why?'  she cried wildly.

'Because from to-day I would fain begin to be honourable,' I
answered in a low voice.  'Because I dare not be generous at
another's cost.  I must go back whence I came.'

'To the Chatelet?'  she muttered.

'Yes, Mademoiselle, to the Chatelet.'

She tried feverishly to raise her mask with her hand.

'I am not well,' she stammered.  'I cannot breathe.'

And she began to sway so violently in her saddle that I sprang
down, and, running round her horse's head, was just in time to
catch her as she fell.  She was not quite unconscious then, for
as I supported her, she cried out,--

'Do not touch me!  Do not touch me!  You kill me with shame!'

But as she spoke she clung to me; and I made no mistake.  Those
words made me happy.  I carried her to the bank, my heart on
fire, and laid her against it just as M. de Cocheforet rode up.
He sprang from his horse, his eyes blazing, 'What is this?'  he
cried.  'What have you been saying to her, man?'

'She will tell you,' I answered drily, my composure returning
under his eye.  'Amongst other things, that you are free.  From
this moment, M. de Cocheforet, I give you back your parole, and I
take my own honour.  Farewell.'

He cried out something as I mounted, but I did not stay to heed
or answer.  I dashed the spurs into my horse, and rode away past
the cross-roads, past the finger-post; away with the level upland
stretching before me, dry, bare, almost treeless; and behind me,
all I loved.  Once, when I had gone a hundred yards, I looked
back and saw him standing upright against the sky, staring after
me across her body.  And again a minute later I looked back.
This time saw only the slender wooden cross, and below it a dark
blurred mass.



CHAPTER XIV

ST MARTIN'S EVE

It was late evening on the twenty-ninth of November when I rode
into Paris through the Orleans gate.  The wind was in the north-
east, and a great cloud of vapour hung in the eye of an angry
sunset.  The air seemed to be heavy with smoke, the kennels
reeked, my gorge rose at the city's smell; and with all my heart
I envied the man who had gone out of it by the same gate nearly
two months before, with his face to the south and the prospect of
riding day after day and league after league across heath and
moor and pasture.  At least he had had some weeks of life before
him, and freedom and the open air, and hope and uncertainty;
while I came back under doom, and in the pall of smoke that hung
over the huddle of innumerable roofs saw a gloomy shadowing of my
own fate.

For make no mistake.  A man in middle life does not strip himself
of the worldly habit with which experience has clothed him, does
not run counter to all the hard saws and instances by which he
has governed his course so long, without shiverings and doubts
and horrible misgivings, and struggles of heart.  At least a
dozen times between the Loire and Paris I asked myself what
honour was, and what good it could do me when I lay rotting and
forgotten; if I were not a fool following a Jack o' Lanthorn; and
whether, of all the men in the world, the relentless man to whom
I was returning would not be the first to gibe at my folly?

However, shame kept me straight; shame and the memory of
Mademoiselle's looks and words.  I dared not be false to her
again; I could not, after speaking so loftily, fall so low, And
therefore--though not without many a secret struggle and quaking
--I came, on the last evening but one of November, to the Orleans
gate, and rode slowly and sadly through the streets by the
Luxembourg on my way to the Pont au Change.

The struggle had sapped my last strength, however; and with the
first whiff of the gutters, the first rush of barefooted gamins
under my horse's hoofs, the first babel of street cries--the
first breath, in a word, of Paris--there came a new temptation;
to go for one last night to Zaton's, to see the tables again and
the faces of surprise, to be for an hour or two the old Berault.
That would be no breach of honour, for in any case I could not
reach the Cardinal before to-morrow.  And it could do no harm.
It could make no change in anything.  It would not have been a
thing worth struggling about, indeed; only--only I had in my
inmost heart a suspicion that the stoutest resolutions might lose
their force in that atmosphere; and that there even such a
talisman as the memory of a woman's looks and words might lose
its virtue.

Still, I think that I should have succumbed in the end if I had
not received at the corner of the Luxembourg a shock which
sobered me effectually.  As I passed the gates, a coach, followed
by two outriders, swept out of the Palace courtyard; it was going
at a great pace, and I reined my jaded horse on one side to give
it room.  By chance as it whirled by me, one of the leather
curtains flapped back, and I saw for a second by the waning
light--the nearer wheels were no more than two feet from my boot
--a face inside.

A face and no more, and that only for a second.  But it froze me.
It was Richelieu's, the Cardinal's; but not as I had been wont to
see it--keen, cold, acute, with intellect and indomitable will in
every feature.  This face was contorted with the rage of
impatience, was grim with the fever of haste, and the fear of
death.  The eyes burned under the pale brow, the moustache
bristled, the teeth showed through the beard; I could fancy the
man crying 'Faster!  Faster!'  and gnawing his nails in the
impotence of passion; and I shrank back as if I had been struck.
The next moment the outriders splashed me, the coach was a
hundred paces ahead, and I was left chilled and wondering,
foreseeing the worst, and no longer in any mood for Zaton's.

Such a revelation of such a man was enough to appal me, for a
moment conscience cried out that he must have heard that
Cocheforet had escaped him, and through me.  But I dismissed the
idea as soon as formed.  In the vast meshes of the Cardinal's
schemes Cocheforet could be only a small fish; and to account for
the face in the coach I needed a cataclysm, a catastrophe, a
misfortune as far above ordinary mishaps as this man's intellect
rose above the common run of minds.

It was almost dark when I crossed the bridges, and crept
despondently to the Rue Savonnerie.  After stabling my horse I
took my bag and holsters, and climbing the stairs to my old
landlord's--I remember that the place had grown, as it seemed to
me, strangely mean and small and ill-smelling in my absence--I
knocked at the door.  It was promptly opened by the little tailor
himself, who threw up his arms and opened his eyes at sight of
me.

'By Saint Genevieve!'  he said, 'if it is not M. de Berault?'

'It is,' I said.  It touched me a little, after my lonely
journey, to find him so glad to see me; though I had never done
him a greater benefit than sometimes to unbend with him and
borrow his money.  'You look surprised, little man!'  I
continued, as he made way for me to enter.  'I'll be sworn that
you have been pawning my goods and letting my room, you knave!'
'Never, your Excellency!'  he answered.  'On the contrary, I have
been expecting you.'

'How?'  I said.  'To-day?'

'To-day or to-morrow,' he answered, following me in and closing
the door.  'The first thing I said when I heard the news this
morning was--now we shall have M. de Berault back again.  Your
Excellency will pardon the children,' he continued, bobbing round
me, as I took the old seat on the three-legged stool before the
hearth.  'The night is cold and there is no fire in your room.'

While he ran to and fro with my cloak and bags, little Gil, to
whom I had stood at St Sulpice's, borrowing ten crowns the same
day, I remember, came shyly to play with my sword hilt.

'So you expected me back when you heard the news, Frison, did
you?'  I said, taking the lad on my knee.

'To be sure, your Excellency,' he answered, peeping into the
black pot before he lifted it to the hook.

'Very good.  Then now let us hear what the news is,' I said
drily.

'Of the Cardinal, M. de Berault.'

'Ah!  And what?'
He looked at me, holding the heavy pot suspended in his hands.

'You have not heard?'  he exclaimed in astonishment.

'Not a tittle.  Tell it me, my good fellow.'

'You have not heard that his Eminence is disgraced?'

I stared at him.  'Not a word,' I said.

He set down the pot.

'Then your Excellency must have made a very long journey indeed,'
he said with conviction.  'For it has been in the air a week or
more, and I thought that it had brought you back.  A week?  A
month, I dare say.  They whisper that it is the old Queen's
doing.  At any rate, it is certain that they have cancelled his
commissions and displaced his officers.  There are rumours of
immediate peace with Spain.  Everywhere his enemies are lifting
up their heads; and I hear that he has relays of horses set all
the way to the coast that he may fly at any moment.  For what I
know he may be gone already.'

'But, man--' I said, surprised out of my composure.  'The King!
You forget the King.  Let the Cardinal once pipe to him and he
will dance.  And they will dance too!'  I added grimly.

'Yes,' Frison answered eagerly.  'True, your Excellency, but the
King will not see him.  Three times to-day, as I am told, the
Cardinal has driven to the Luxembourg and stood like any common
man in the ante-chamber, so that I hear it was pitiful to see
him.  But his Majesty would not admit him.  And when he went away
the last time I am told that his face was like death!  Well, he
was a great man, and we may be worse ruled, M. de Berault, saving
your presence.  If the nobles did not like him, he was good to
the traders and the bourgeoisie, and equal to all.'

'Silence, man!  Silence, and let me think,' I said, much excited.
And while he bustled to and fro, getting my supper, and the
firelight played about the snug, sorry little room, and the child
toyed with his plaything, I fell to digesting this great news,
and pondering how I stood now and what I ought to do.  At first
sight, I know, it seemed to me that I had nothing to do but to
sit still.  In a few hours the man who had taken my bond would be
powerless, and I should be free; in a few hours I might smile at
him.  To all appearance the dice had fallen well for me.  I had
done a great thing, run a great risk, won a woman's love; and,
after all, I was not to pay the penalty.

But a word which fell from Frison as he fluttered round me,
pouring out the broth and cutting the bread, dropped into my mind
and spoiled my satisfaction.

'Yes, your Excellency,' he said, confirming something he had
stated before and which I had missed, 'and I am told that the
last time he came into the gallery there was not a man of all the
scores who had been at his levee last Monday would speak to him.
They fell off like rats--just like rats--until he was left
standing alone.  And I have seen him!'--Frison lifted up his eyes
and his hands and drew in his breath--'Ah!  I have seen the King
look shabby beside him!  And his eye!  I would not like to meet
it now.'

'Pish!'  I growled.  'Someone has fooled you.  Men are wiser than
that.'

'So?  Well, your Excellency understands,' he answered meekly.
'But--there are no cats on a cold hearth.'

I told him again that he was a fool.  But for all that, and my
reasoning, I felt uncomfortable.  This was a great man, if ever a
great man lived, and they were all leaving him; and I--well, I
had no cause to love him.  But I had taken his money, I had
accepted his commission, and I had betrayed him.  These three
things being so, if he fell before I could--with the best will in
the world--set myself right with him, so much the better for me.
That was my gain--the fortune of war, the turn of the dice.  But
if I lay hid, and took time for my ally, and being here while he
still stood, though tottering, waited until he fell, what of my
honour then?  What of the grand words I had said to Mademoiselle
at Agen?  I should be like the recreant in the old romance, who,
lying in the ditch while the battle raged, came out afterwards
and boasted of his courage.

And yet the flesh was weak.  A day, twenty-four hours, two days,
might make the difference between life and death, love and death;
and I wavered.  But at last I settled what I would do.  At noon
the next day, the time at which I should have presented myself if
I had not heard this news, at that time I would still present
myself.  Not earlier; I owed myself the chance.  Not later; that
was due to him.

Having so settled it, I thought to rest in peace.  But with the
first light I was awake, and it was all I could do to keep myself
quiet until I heard Frison stirring.  I called to him then to
know if there was any news, and lay waiting and listening while
he went down to the street to learn.  It seemed an endless time
before he came back; an age, when he came back, before he spoke.

'Well, he has not set off?'  I asked at last, unable to control
my eagerness.

Of course he had not; and at nine o'clock I sent Frison out
again; and at ten and eleven--always with the same result.  I was
like a man waiting and looking and, above all, listening for a
reprieve; and as sick as any craven.  But when he came back, at
eleven, I gave up hope and dressed myself carefully.  I suppose I
had an odd look then, however, for Frison stopped me at the door,
and asked me, with evident alarm, where I was going.

I put the little man aside gently.

'To the tables,' I said, 'to make a big throw, my friend.'

It was a fine morning, sunny, keen, pleasant, when I went out
into the street; but I scarcely noticed it.  All my thoughts were
where I was going, so that it seemed but a step from my threshold
to the Hotel Richelieu; I was no sooner gone from the one than I
found myself at the other.  Now, as on a memorable evening when I
had crossed the street in a drizzling rain, and looked that way
with foreboding, there were two or three guards, in the
Cardinal's livery, loitering in front of the great gates.  Coming
nearer, I found the opposite pavement under the Louvre thronged
with people, not moving about their business, but standing all
silent, all looking across furtively, all with the air of persons
who wished to be thought passing by.  Their silence and their
keen looks had in some way an air of menace.  Looking back after
I had turned in towards the gates, I found them devouring me with
their eyes.

And certainly they had little else to look at.  In the courtyard,
where, some mornings, when the Court was in Paris, I had seen a
score of coaches waiting and thrice as many servants, were now
emptiness and sunshine and stillness.  The officer on guard,
twirling his moustachios, looked at me in wonder as I passed him;
the lackeys lounging in the portico, and all too much taken up
with whispering to make a pretence of being of service, grinned
at my appearance.  But that which happened when I had mounted the
stairs and came to the door of the ante-chamber outdid all.  The
man on guard would have opened the door, but when I went to
enter, a major-domo who was standing by, muttering with two or
three of his kind, hastened forward and stopped me.

'Your business, Monsieur, if you please?'  he said inquisitively;
while I wondered why he and the others looked at me so strangely.

'I am M. de Berault,' I answered sharply.  'I have the entree.'

He bowed politely enough.

'Yes, M. de Berault, I have the honour to know your face,' he
said.  'But--pardon me.  Have you business with his Eminence?'

'I have the common business,' I answered sharply.  'By which many
of us live, sirrah!  To wait on him.'

'But--by appointment, Monsieur?'

'No,' I said, astonished.  'It is the usual hour.  For the matter
of that, however, I have business with him.'

The man still looked at me for a moment in seeming embarrassment.
Then he stood aside and signed to the door-keeper to open the
door.  I passed in, uncovering; with an assured face and
steadfast mien, ready to meet all eyes.  In a moment, on the
threshold, the mystery was explained.

The room was empty.



CHAPTER XV

ST MARTIN'S SUMMER

Yes, at the great Cardinal's levee I was the only client!  I
stared round the room, a long, narrow gallery, through which it
was his custom to walk every morning, after receiving his more
important visitors.  I stared, I say, from side to side, in a
state of stupefaction.  The seats against either wall were empty,
the recesses of the windows empty too.  The hat sculptured and
painted here and there, the staring R, the blazoned arms looked
down on a vacant floor.  Only on a little stool by the farther
door, sat a quiet-faced man in black, who read, or pretended to
read, in a little book, and never looked up.  One of those men,
blind, deaf, secretive, who fatten in the shadow of the great.

Suddenly, while I stood confounded and full of shamed thought--
for I had seen the ante-chamber of Richelieu's old hotel so
crowded that he could not walk through it--this man closed his
book, rose and came noiselessly towards me.

'M. de Berault?'  he said.

'Yes,' I answered.

'His Eminence awaits you.  Be good enough to follow me.'

I did so, in a deeper stupor than before.  For how could the
Cardinal know that I was here?  How could he have known when he
gave the order?  But I had short time to think of these things,
or others.  We passed through two rooms, in one of which some
secretaries were writing, we stopped at a third door.  Over all
brooded a silence which could be felt.  The usher knocked,
opened, and, with his finger on his lip, pushed aside a curtain
and signed to me to enter.  I did so and found myself behind a
screen.

'Is that M. de Berault?'  asked a thin, high-pitched voice.

'Yes, Monseigneur,' I answered trembling.

'Then come, my friend, and talk to me.'

I went round the screen, and I know not how it was, the watching
crowd outside, the vacant ante-chamber in which I had stood, the
stillness and silence all seemed to be concentrated here, and to
give to the man I saw before me a dignity which he had never
possessed for me when the world passed through his doors, and the
proudest fawned on him for a smile.  He sat in a great chair on
the farther side of the hearth, a little red skull-cap on his
head, his fine hands lying still in his lap.  The collar of lawn
which fell over his cape was quite plain, but the skirts of his
red robe were covered with rich lace, and the order of the Holy
Ghost, a white dove on a gold cross, shone on his breast.  Among
the multitudinous papers on the great table near him I saw a
sword and pistols; and some tapestry that covered a little table
behind him failed to hide a pair of spurred riding-boots.  But as
I advanced he looked towards me with the utmost composure; with a
face mild and almost benign, in which I strove in vain to read
the traces of last night's passion.  So that it flashed across me
that if this man really stood (and afterwards I knew that he did)
on the thin razor-edge between life and death, between the
supreme of earthly power, lord of France and arbiter of Europe,
and the nothingness of the clod, he justified his fame.  He gave
weaker natures no room for triumph.

The thought was no sooner entertained than it was gone.

'And so you are back at last, M. de Berault,' he said gently.  'I
have been expecting to see you since nine this morning.'

'Your Eminence knew, then--' I muttered.

'That you returned to Paris by the Orleans gate last evening
alone?'  he answered, fitting together the ends of his fingers,
and looking at me over them with inscrutable eyes.  'Yes, I knew
all that last night.  And now, of your business.  You have been
faithful and diligent, I am sure.  Where is he?'

I stared at him and was dumb.  In some way the strange things I
had seen since I had left my lodgings, the surprises I had found
awaiting me here, had driven my own fortunes, my own peril, out
of my head--until this moment.  Now, at this question, all
returned with a rush, and I remembered where I stood.  My heart
heaved suddenly in my breast.  I strove for a savour of the old
hardihood, but for the moment I could not find a word.

'Well,' he said lightly, a faint smile lifting his moustache.
'You do not speak.  You left Auch with him on the twenty-fourth,
M. de Berault.  So much I know.  And you reached Paris without
him last night.  He has not given you the slip?'

'No, Monseigneur,' I muttered.

'Ha!  that is good,' he answered, sinking back again in his
chair. 'For the moment--but I knew that I could depend on you.
And now where is he?  What have you done with him?  He knows
much, and the sooner I know it the better.  Are your people
bringing him, M. de Berault?'

'No, Monseigneur,' I stammered, with dry lips.  His very good-
humour, his benignity, appalled me.  I knew how terrible would be
the change, how fearful his rage, when I should tell him the
truth.  And yet that I, Gil de Berault, should tremble before any
man!  With that thought I spurred myself, as it were, to the
task. 'No, your Eminence,' I said, with the energy of despair.
'I have not brought him, because I have set him free.'

'Because you have--WHAT?'  he exclaimed.  He leaned forward as he
spoke, his hands on the arm of the chair; and his eyes growing
each instant smaller, seemed to read my soul.

'Because I have let him go,' I repeated.

'And why?'  he said, in a voice like the rasping of a file.

'Because I took him unfairly,' I answered.

'Because, Monseigneur, I am a gentleman, and this task should
have been given to one who was not.  I took him, if you must
know,' I continued impatiently--the fence once crossed I was
growing bolder--'by dogging a woman's steps and winning her
confidence and betraying it.  And whatever I have done ill in my
life--of which you were good enough to throw something in my
teeth when I was last here--I have never done that, and I will
not!'

'And so you set him free?'

'Yes.'

'After you had brought him to Auch?'

'Yes.'

'And, in point of fact, saved him from falling into the hands of
the Commandant at Auch?'

'Yes,' I answered desperately to all.

'Then, what of the trust I placed in you, sirrah?'  he rejoined,
in a terrible voice; and stooping still farther forward he probed
me with his eyes.  'You who prate of trust and confidence, who
received your life on parole, and but for your promise to me
would have been carrion this month past, answer me that?  What of
the trust I placed in you?'

'The answer is simple,' I said, shrugging my shoulders with a
touch of my old self.  'I am here to pay the penalty.'

'And do you think that I do not know why?'  he retorted, striking
one hand on the arm of his chair with a force that startled me.
'Because you have heard, sir, that my power is gone!  Because you
have heard that I, who was yesterday the King's right hand, am
to-day dried up, withered and paralysed!  Because you have heard
--but have a care!  have a care!'  he continued with
extraordinary vehemence, and in a voice like a dog's snarl. 'You
and those others!  Have a care, I say, or you may find yourselves
mistaken yet.'

'As Heaven shall judge me,' I answered solemnly, 'that is not
true.  Until I reached Paris last night I knew nothing of this
report.  I came here with a single mind, to redeem my honour by
placing again in your Eminence's hands that which you gave me on
trust, and here I do place it.'

For a moment he remained in the same attitude, staring at me
fixedly.  Then his face relaxed somewhat.

'Be good enough to ring that bell,' he said.

It stood on a table near me.  I rang it, and a velvet-footed man
in black came in, and gliding up to the Cardinal, placed a paper
in his hand.  The Cardinal looked at it; while the man stood with
his head obsequiously bent, and my heart beat furiously.

'Very good,' his Eminence said, after a pause which seemed to me
to be endless, 'Let the doors be thrown open.'

The man bowed low, and retired behind the screen.  I heard a
little bell ring somewhere in the silence, and in a moment the
Cardinal stood up.

'Follow me!'  he said, with a strange flash of his keen eyes.

Astonished, I stood aside while he passed to the screen; then I
followed him.  Outside the first door, which stood open, we found
eight or nine persons--pages, a monk, the major-domo, and several
guards waiting like mutes.  These signed to me to precede them
and fell in behind us, and in that order we passed through the
first room and the second, where the clerks stood with bent heads
to receive us.  The last door, the door of the ante-chamber, flew
open as we approached, voices cried, 'Room!  Room for his
Eminence!'  we passed through two lines of bowing lackeys, and
entered--an empty chamber.

The ushers did not know how to look at one another; the lackeys
trembled in their shoes.  But the Cardinal walked on, apparently
unmoved, until he had passed slowly half the length of the
chamber.  Then he turned himself about, looking first to one side
and then to the other, with a low laugh of derision.

'Father,' he said in his thin voice, 'what does the Psalmist say?
"I am become like a pelican in the wilderness and like an owl
that is in the desert!"'

The monk mumbled assent.

'And later in the same psalm, is it not written, "They shall
perish, but thou shalt endure?"'

'It is so,' the father answered.  'Amen.'

'Doubtless though, that refers to another life,' the Cardinal
said, with his slow wintry smile.  'In the meantime we will go
back to our books, and serve God and the King in small things if
not in great.  Come, father, this is no longer a place for us.
VANITAS VANITATUM OMNIA VANITAS!  We will retire.'

And as solemnly as we had come we marched back through the first
and second and third doors until we stood again in the silence of
the Cardinal's chamber--he and I and the velvet-footed man in
black.  For a while Richelieu seemed to forget me.  He stood
brooding on the hearth, his eyes on a small fire, which burned
there though the weather was warm.  Once I heard him laugh, and
twice he uttered in a tone of bitter mockery the words,--

'Fools!  Fools!  Fools!'

At last he looked up, saw me, and started.

'Ah!'  he said, 'I had forgotten you.  Well, you are fortunate,
M. de Berault.  Yesterday I had a hundred clients; to-day I have
only one, and I cannot afford to hang him.  But for your liberty
that is another matter.'

I would have said something, pleaded something; but he turned
abruptly to the table, and sitting down wrote a few lines on a
piece of paper.  Then he rang his bell, while I stood waiting and
confounded.

The man in black came from behind the screen.

'Take this letter and that gentleman to the upper guard-room,'
the Cardinal said sharply.  'I can hear no more,' he continued,
frowning and raising his hand to forbid interruption.  'The
matter is ended, M. de Berault.  Be thankful.'

In a moment I was outside the door, my head in a whirl, my heart
divided between gratitude and resentment.  I would fain have
stood to consider my position; but I had no time.  Obeying a
gesture, I followed my guide along several passages, and
everywhere found the same silence, the same monastic stillness.
At length, while I was dolefully considering whether the Bastille
or the Chatelet would be my fate, he stopped at a door, thrust
the letter into my hands, and lifting the latch, signed to me to
enter.

I went in in amazement, and stopped in confusion.  Before me,
alone, just risen from a chair, with her face one moment pale,
the next crimson with blushes, stood Mademoiselle de Cocheforet.
I cried out her name.

'M. de Berault,' she said, trembling.  'You did not expect to see
me?'

'I expected to see no one so little, Mademoiselle,' I answered,
striving to recover my composure.

'Yet you might have thought that we should not utterly desert
you,' she replied, with a reproachful humility which went to my
heart.  'We should have been base indeed, if we had not made some
attempt to save you.  I thank Heaven, M. de Berault, that it has
so far succeeded that that strange man has promised me your life.
You have seen him?'  she continued eagerly and in another tone,
while her eyes grew on a sudden large with fear.

'Yes, Mademoiselle,' I said.  'I have seen him, and it is true,
He has given me my life.'

'And--?'

'And sent me into imprisonment.'

'For how long?'  she whispered.

'I do not know,' I answered.  'I fear during the King's
pleasure.'

She shuddered.

'I may have done more harm than good,' she murmured, looking at
me piteously.  'But I did it for the best.  I told him all, and
perhaps I did harm.'

But to hear her accuse herself thus, when she had made this long
and lonely journey to save me, when she had forced herself into
her enemy's presence, and had, as I was sure she had, abased
herself for me, was more than I could bear.

'Hush, Mademoiselle, hush!'  I said, almost roughly.  'You hurt
me.  You have made me happy; and yet I wish that you were not
here, where, I fear, you have few friends, but back at
Cocheforet.  You have done more for me than I expected, and a
hundred times more than I deserved.  But it must end here.  I was
a ruined man before this happened, before I ever saw you.  I am
no worse now, but I am still that; and I would not have your name
pinned to mine on Paris lips.  Therefore, good-bye.  God forbid I
should say more to you, or let you stay where foul tongues would
soon malign you.'

She looked at me in a kind of wonder; then, with a growing
smile,--

'It is too late,' she said gently.

'Too late?'  I exclaimed.  'How, Mademoiselle?'

'Because--do you remember, M. de Berault, what you told me of
your love-story under the guide-post by Agen?  That it could have
no happy ending?  For the same reason I was not ashamed to tell
mine to the Cardinal.  By this time it is common property.'

I looked at her as she stood facing me.  Her eyes shone under the
lashes that almost hid them.  Her figure drooped, and yet a smile
trembled on her lips.

'What did you tell him, Mademoiselle?'  I whispered, my breath
coming quickly.

'That I loved,' she answered boldly, raising her clear eyes to
mine.  'And therefore that I was not ashamed to beg--even on my
knees.'

I fell on mine, and caught her hand before the last word passed
her lips.  For the moment I forgot King and Cardinal, prison and
the future, all; all except that this woman, so pure and so
beautiful, so far above me in all things, loved me.  For the
moment, I say.  Then I remembered myself.  I stood up, and stood
back from her in a sudden revulsion of feeling.

'You do not know me!'  I cried, 'You do not know what I have
done!'

'That is what I do know,' she answered, looking at me with a
wondrous smile.

'Ah!  but you do not!'  I cried.  'And besides, there is this
--this between us.'  And I picked up the Cardinal's letter.  It
had fallen on the floor.  She turned a shade paler.  Then she
cried quickly,--

'Open it!  open it!  It is not sealed nor closed.'

I obeyed mechanically, dreading with a horrible dread what I
might see.  Even when I had it open I looked at the finely
scrawled characters with eyes askance.  But at last I made it
out.  And it ran thus:--

'THE KING'S PLEASURE IS THAT M. GIL DE BERAULT, HAVING MIXED
HIMSELF UP IN AFFAIRS OF STATE, RETIRE FORTHWITH TO THE DEMESNE
OF COCHEFORET, AND CONFINE HIMSELF WITHIN ITS LIMITS UNTIL THE
KING'S PLEASURE BE FURTHER KNOWN.

'THE CARDINAL DE RICHELIEU.'

We were married next day, and a fortnight later were at
Cocheforet, in the brown woods under the southern mountains;
while the great Cardinal, once more triumphant over his enemies,
saw with cold, smiling eyes the world pass through his chamber.
The flood tide of his prosperity lasted thirteen years from that
time, and ceased only with his death.  For the world had learned
its lesson; to this hour they call that day, which saw me stand
alone for all his friends, 'The Day of Dupes.'