his horse, and stretched
himself out at full length under the cart. Now and again he had crawled
out from under this uncomfortable shelter and walked up and down in
ankle-deep mud, trying to restore circulation in his stiffened limbs;
now and again a kind of torpor had come over him, and he had fallen into
a brief and restless sleep. He would at this moment have given half his
fortune for knowledge of the exact time.

But through all this weary waiting he was never for a moment in doubt.
Unlike Armand St. Just, he had the simplest, most perfect faith in his
chief. He had been Blakeney's constant companion in all these adventures
for close upon four years now; the thought of failure, however vague,
never once entered his mind.

He was only anxious for his chief's welfare. He knew that he would
succeed, but he would have liked to have spared him much of the physical
fatigue and the nerve-racking strain of these hours that lay between
the daring deed and the hope of safety. Therefore he was conscious of
an acute tingling of his nerves, which went on even during the brief
patches of fitful sleep, and through the numbness that invaded his whole
body while the hours dragged wearily and slowly along.

Then, quite suddenly, he felt wakeful and alert; quite a while--even
before he heard the welcome signal--he knew, with a curious, subtle
sense of magnetism, that the hour had come, and that his chief was
somewhere near by, not very far.

Then he heard the cry--a seamew's call--repeated thrice at intervals,
and five minutes later something loomed out of the darkness quite close
to the hind wheels of the cart.

"Hist! Ffoulkes!" came in a soft whisper, scarce louder than the wind.

"Present!" came in quick response.

"Here, help me to lift the child into the cart. He is asleep, and has
been a dead weight on my arm for close on an hour now. Have you a dry
bit of sacking or something to lay him on?"

"Not very dry, I am afraid."

With tender care the two men lifted the sleeping little King of France
into the rickety cart. Blakeney laid his cloak over him, and listened
for awhile to the slow regular breathing of the child.

"St. Just is not here--you know that?" said Sir Andrew after a while.

"Yes, I knew it," replied Blakeney curtly.

It was characteristic of these two men that not a word about the
adventure itself, about the terrible risks and dangers of the past few
hours, was exchanged between them. The child was h