an not help
himself to a loan? M. le Duc owes Cammercy something for that ride in
a glass coach, and for a night of a greatcoat I shall be pleased to
discharge the family obligation."

Count Victor there and then came to a bold decision. He would, perhaps,
not only borrow a coat and cover his nakedness, but furthermore cover
his flight by the same strategy. The only place in the neighbourhood
where he could obscure his footsteps in that white night of stars was
in the castle itself--perhaps in the very fosse whence he had made his
escape. There the traffic of the day was bound to have left a myriad
tracks, amongst which the imprint of a red-heeled Rouen shoe would never
advertise itself. But it was too soon yet to risk so bold a venture, for
his absence might be at this moment the cause of search round all the
castle, and ordinary prudence suggested that he should permit some time
to pass before venturing near the dwelling that now was in his view, its
lights blurred by haze, no sign apparent that they missed or searched
for him.

For an hour or more, therefore, he kept his blood from congelation by
walking back and forward in the thicket into which the softly breathing
but shrewish night wind penetrated less cruelly than elsewhere, and
at last judged the interval enough to warrant his advance upon the
enterprise.

Behold then Count Victor running hard across the white level waste of
the park into the very boar's den--a comic spectacle, had there been any
one to see it, in a dancer's shoes and hose, coatless and excited.
He looked over the railing of the fosse to find the old silence
undisturbed.

Was his flight discovered yet? If not it was something of a madness,
after all, to come back to the jaws of the trap.

"Here's a pretty problem!" he told himself, hesitating upon the brink of
the ditch into which dipped a massive stair--"Here's a pretty problem!
to have the roquelaire or to fly without it and perish of cold, because
there is one chance in twenty that monsieur the warder opposite my
chamber may not be wholly a fool and may have looked into his mousetrap.
I do not think he has; at all events here are the alternatives, and the
wiser is invariably the more unpleasant. _Allons!_ Victor, _advienne que
pourra_, and Heaven help us!"

He ran quickly down the stair into the fosse, crept along in the shelter
of the ivy for a little, saw that no one was visible, and darted across
and up to a postern in the eastern