arlet Pimpernel, crossed over to England and enrolled
himself tinder the banner of the heroic chief. But he had been unable
hitherto to be an active member of the League. The chief was loath to
allow him to run foolhardy risks. The St. Justs--both Marguerite and
Armand--were still very well-known in Paris. Marguerite was not a woman
easily forgotten, and her marriage with an English "aristo" did not
please those republican circles who had looked upon her as their queen.
Armand's secession from his party into the ranks of the emigres had
singled him out for special reprisals, if and whenever he could be got
hold of, and both brother and sister had an unusually bitter enemy in
their cousin Antoine St. Just--once an aspirant to Marguerite's hand,
and now a servile adherent and imitator of Robespierre, whose ferocious
cruelty he tried to emulate with a view to ingratiating himself with the
most powerful man of the day.

Nothing would have pleased Antoine St. Just more than the opportunity of
showing his zeal and his patriotism by denouncing his own kith and kin
to the Tribunal of the Terror, and the Scarlet Pimpernel, whose own
slender fingers were held on the pulse of that reckless revolution, had
no wish to sacrifice Armand's life deliberately, or even to expose it to
unnecessary dangers.

Thus it was that more than a year had gone by before Armand St. Just--an
enthusiastic member of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel--was able
to do aught for its service. He had chafed under the enforced restraint
placed upon him by the prudence of his chief, when, indeed, he was
longing to risk his life with the comrades whom he loved and beside the
leader whom he revered.

At last, in the beginning of '94 he persuaded Blakeney to allow him
to join the next expedition to France. What the principal aim of that
expedition was the members of the League did not know as yet, but what
they did know was that perils--graver even than hitherto--would attend
them on their way.

The circumstances had become very different of late At first the
impenetrable mystery which had surrounded the personality of the chief
had been a full measure of safety, but now one tiny corner of that
veil of mystery had been lifted by two rough pairs of hands at least;
Chauvelin, ex-ambassador at the English Court, was no longer in any
doubt as to the identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel, whilst Collot
d'Herbois had seen him at Boulogne, and had there been effectually