uting ahead, thrust his head over a bank of gravel and reported
several men in possession of the boat which Jean-Marie had so carefully
anchored in the little Fanal Bay just round the point out of sight of
the Castle. Worst of all, one of the captors was Don Raphael Llorient
himself.

Almost at the same moment, the last individual rear-guard of the little
party, a slim young lad called in this chronicle the Abbe John,
discovered that they were being tracked from behind. They had indeed
walked into the sack without a hole at the other end. They stood between
two fires. For they had on their hands good old Madame Amelie, ready at
the first discouragement to sink down on the sand, and give up all for
lost.

He dared not therefore speak openly. Cautiously the Abbe John called the
miller to his side, and imparted his discovery.

"A quarter of an hour at the most, and they will have us!" he whispered.

"Umm!" said the Miller-Alcalde. "I suppose we could not--eh--you and I?
What think you? I can strike a good buffet and you with your point! Are
you ready?"

"Ready enough," said the Abbe John, "but they would call out at the
first sight of us--indeed, either crack of pistol or clash of sword
would bring up Don Raphael and his folk. We must think of something
else. For men it might do, but there is your mother to consider--and
Claire!"

"I wish it had been the bare steel--or else the cudgel," said the
miller; "I am no hand at running and plotting!"

But the Abbe John was.

"Here," he said abruptly, stripping the silk-lined cloak from his
shoulders, "take that. Get me Claire's lace mantilla and her wrapper
with the capuchin hood. I have made a good enough maid before at the
revels of carnival. They always chose me to act Joan of Domremy at the
Sorbonne on Orleans Day. It is Claire they are after. Moreover, they are
in a hurry. Be quick--bid her give them to you. But tell her nothing!"

And so the blunt Alcalde-Miller went up to Claire, who was busily
supplying consolation to Madame Amelie.

"Your lace mantilla," he said, "your cloak and hood! Quick--we have need
of them!" he said abruptly. "Take this."

Now Claire had served too long an apprenticeship to dangers and strange
unexplained demands during her father's wanderings to show any surprise.
She put them on the miller's arm without a single question. It was only
when he added, "Now--put this on," and threw the silken court-cloak
belonging to the Abbe John over h