ward Bayeux.

It was the road, too, to Troyes and Aurelie de Roquemaure, the woman
who had to answer to him for the theft of his child, and also for her
duplicity when they had met in Paris!

CHAPTER XXV.

"I KNOW YOUR FACE."

The deserted road along which he now walked was, in a way, a relief to
him. Nothing could have better suited his present needs than to be
thus outside the life of any town and free from all observation, for
he had much to meditate upon--many plans to form for his safety. And
of those plans, the first to be carried out was to free himself from
any appearance of conspicuousness which would draw attention on him.

There was, to begin with, the officer's jacket and cap which he had
assumed, and the naval sword by his side, from which he had by now
removed all damp it might have received from being in the sea. Yet how
to deprive himself of the latter, and still be safe, he knew not.

As for the jacket--which was, indeed, a short coat filled with
pockets, outside and in--he could dispense with it very well. He had
dragged it on over his own coat when quitting the burning transport,
simply as a disguise, as a safeguard. It could now be discarded.

His clothes--the plain English clothes which he had worn in London,
and in which he had joined Rooke's flagship and fought through
Barfleur and La Hogue[8]--would attract no attention. They were
suitable to any one in the middle class; but with the cap it was not
the same thing, since he had nothing wherewith to replace it, and if
he rejected that he must go bareheaded. This would not do; he had,
therefore, to cast about for some headdress.

[Footnote 8: In those days none possessed naval uniform, and, from
admiral downward, all wore what they chose.]

At last, however, he was obliged to retain it, altering it as well as
he was able with his fingers, tearing off a strip of lace round it and
throwing away the gilt cockade. As for the jacket, that was easily
disposed of; he rolled up some stones in it and flung it into a pool
of water among the reeds by the wayside, where it soon sank beneath
the surface. But the sword still remained--a good enough blade, in a
leather scabbard, and with not too much to proclaim that it was a
sailor's except an anchor--on, of course, the eternal sun, Louis's
emblem--fastened to the top of its handle. There was also a sword
knot, which followed the jacket into another pool, and he decided that
he must take his ch