rches, and started in perfect silence.
They were divided into three squads; one of eight men, led by the
captain of gendarmerie, another of ten, commanded by the colonel, and
the third of twelve men, with Roland at its head. On leaving the town
they separated.

The captain of the gendarmerie, who knew the localities better than
the colonel of dragoons, took upon himself to guard the window of La
Correrie, giving upon the forest of Seillon, with his eight men.
The colonel of dragoons was commissioned by Roland to watch the main
entrance of the Chartreuse; with him were five gendarmes and five
dragoons. Roland was to search the interior, taking with him five
gendarmes and seven dragoons.

Half an hour was allowed each squad to reach its post; it was more
than was needed. Roland and his men were to scale the orchard wall when
half-past eleven was ringing from the belfry at Peronnaz. The captain
of gendarmerie followed the main road from Pont d'Ain to the edge of
the woods, which he skirted until he reached his appointed station. The
colonel of dragoons took the crossroad which branches from the highway
of Pont d'Ain and leads to the great portal of the Chartreuse. Roland
crossed the fields to the orchard wall which, as the reader will
remember, he had already climbed on two occasions.

Punctually at half-past eleven he gave the signal to his men to scale
the wall. By the time they reached the other side the men, if they
did not yet know that Roland was brave, were at least sure that he was
active.

Roland pointed in the dusk to a door--the one that led from the orchard
into the cloister. Then he sprang ahead through the rank grasses; first,
he opened the door; first, he entered the cloister.

All was dark, silent and solitary. Roland, still guiding his men,
reached the refectory. Absolute solitude; utter silence.

They crossed the hall obliquely, and returned to the garden without
alarming a living creature except the owls and the bats. There still
remained the cistern, the mortuary vault, and the pavilion, or rather,
the chapel in the forest, to be searched. Roland crossed the open space
between the cistern and the monastery. After descending the steps, he
lighted three torches, kept one, and handed the other two, one to
a dragoon, the other to a gendarme; then he raised the stone that
concealed the stairway.

The gendarmes who followed Roland began to think him as brave as he was
active.

They followed the sub