aud, and how
could you explain if they recognized you?"

"But we may not go near the inn," answered La Mothe, to whom the ride
meant neither more nor less than a morning with Ursula de Vesc,
therefore a delight not to be denied. "But what of horses?"

"They are being saddled this very moment," replied Jean Saxe, and then
went on to paint out La Mothe's roseate dreams with the dull brush of
realities. "Always," and he lowered his voice as he spoke, "whether by
day or by night, you will find a horse waiting ready for your ride to
Valmy. It is in the stall facing the door, monsieur. By day the
stable is open and not a soul will ask questions; saddle and bridle for
yourself, then ride like the devil. By night send a stone through the
last window on the left and I will be with you in three seconds. Don't
spare your spurs, that's my advice."

"God send the man who rides to Valmy nothing redder than a red spur."
Villon had joined La Mothe at the window, and was peering out at the
stir of men and horses in the open space between the inn and the castle
gates.

"Saxe, what man of yours is that who is bitting Grey Roland? I don't
know his face."

"A stop-gap," answered Saxe indifferently. "A gipsy fellow I think he
is by his colour. Old Michel is drunk in the barn--how I don't know,
but the Chien Noir is none the better for it--this other is in his
place for the day. I don't know his name, but he can tell a horse from
a mule by more than the ears, and that's name enough for me."

"Who owns that huge, raw-boned roan?" asked La Mothe. "Surely I have
seen it somewhere."

"It's as much a stranger to me as Michel's stop-gap," answered Saxe.
"It's not one of the regular Chateau horses, that's certain. The beast
has power in his legs, rough though he is. Why do you ask, monsieur?"

But La Mothe had already lost his interest. "There is the Dauphin," he
said. "Come, let us go."

But his gaze was fixed on the slender figure which followed the boy,
and the eyes of a much greyer age than a lover of twenty-four with the
heart of eighteen might well have lit into a sparkle at the charm of
the picture. He was not learned in women's stuffs, or the hundred
little arts through which an accent, as it were, is put upon a charm
already sufficiently gracious, or a beauty brought into yet clearer
relief for the luring and undoing of the unsuspecting male, and so
could not have told whether Ursula de Vesc was clad in sober grey