twenty in all, and were
well armed; but five to one are large odds, and we had little
ammunition, while, for all we knew, the house might be fired with ease
from the outside. The roads north and south being occupied, and the
river enclosing us on the west, there remained only one direction in
which escape seemed possible; but, as we knew nothing of the country,
and the brigands everything, the desperate idea of plunging into it
blindly, at night, and with pursuers at our heels, was dismissed as
soon as formed.

Parabere interrupted these calculations by drawing me aside into the
room in which we had supped, where, after rallying me on the whimsical
notion of the Grand Master of the Ordnance and Governor of the Bastile
being besieged in a paltry inn, he confessed that he had been wrong,
and that the adventure was likely to prove serious. "Ten to one this
is the very band that Bareilles is pursuing," he said.

"Very likely," I answered bluntly; "but the question is how are we to
evade them. Are we to fight or fly?"

"Well, for lighting," he replied coolly; "the front gate lies in the
road, there are no shutters to half the windows, the door is crazy, and
there is a thatched pent-house against one wall."

"And no help-nearer than Gueret."

"Three leagues," he assented. "And from that we are cut off. Fifty men
in the gorge might hold it against five hundred. Better man the
courtyard here than that, tether the horses in the gateway, and fight
it out."

"Perhaps so," I said; and we looked at one another, hearing through the
open door the men muttering and whispering in the kitchen, and above
their voices the dull murmur of the stream, which seemed of a piece
with the bleak night outside, the ruined hamlet, and the danger that
lurked round us. Bitterly repenting the hardihood that had led me to
expose myself to such risks in breach of the King's commandment, I
found it difficult to direct my mind to the immediate question. So many
reflections connected with my mission at Chatelherault and other
affairs of state would intrude that I seemed to be occupied rather with
the results of my death at this juncture, and particularly the injury
which it must inflict on the King's service, than with the question how
I could escape.

However, Parabere soon recalled me to the point. "It is now ten
o'clock," he said in a placid tone; "we have two hours."

"Yes," I answered; then, as if my mind had all the time been running in