ke some noxious vermin. I knew that de Batz would rise to the
bait. I told him in my letter that the Dauphin would be at the Chateau
d'Ourde this night, but that I feared the revolutionary Government had
got wind of this fact, and were sending an armed escort to bring the
lad away. This letter Ffoulkes took to him; I knew that he would make a
vigorous effort to get the Dauphin into his hands, and that during
the scuffle that one hair on Fortune's head would for one second only,
mayhap, come within my reach. I had so planned the expedition that we
were bound to arrive at the forest of Boulogne by nightfall, and night
is always a useful ally. But at the guard-house of the Rue Ste. Anne
I realised for the first time that those brutes had pressed me into a
tighter corner than I had pre-conceived."

He paused, and once again that look of recklessness swept over his face,
and his eyes--still hollow and circled--shone with the excitement of
past memories.

"I was such a weak, miserable wretch, then," he said, in answer
to Marguerite's appeal. "I had to try and build up some strength,
when--Heaven forgive me for the sacrilege--I had unwittingly risked your
precious life, dear heart, in that blind endeavour to save mine own.
By Gad! it was no easy task in that jolting vehicle with that noisome
wretch beside me for sole company; yet I ate and I drank and I slept for
three days and two nights, until the hour when in the darkness I struck
Heron from behind, half-strangled him first, then gagged him, and
finally slipped into his filthy coat and put that loathsome bandage
across my head, and his battered hat above it all. The yell he gave when
first I attacked him made every horse rear--you must remember it--the
noise effectually drowned our last scuffle in the coach. Chauvelin was
the only man who might have suspected what had occurred, but he had gone
on ahead, and bald-headed Fortune had passed by me, and I had managed
to grab its one hair. After that it was all quite easy. The sergeant and
the soldiers had seen very little of Heron and nothing of me; it did not
take a great effort to deceive them, and the darkness of the night was
my most faithful friend. His raucous voice was not difficult to imitate,
and darkness always muffles and changes every tone. Anyway, it was not
likely that those loutish soldiers would even remotely suspect the trick
that was being played on them. The citizen agent's orders were promptly
and implicitly