ngs and one or two others. I told them to be ready for
us to-night as soon as the place was quiet."

"You were so sure of success then, Percy?" she asked in wonderment.

"So sure," he replied simply.

Then he led her to the window, and lifted her onto the sill. It was not
high from the ground and two pairs of willing arms were there ready to
help her down.

Then he, too, followed, and quietly the little party turned to walk
toward the gate. The ramparts themselves now looked strangely still
and silent: the merrymakers were far away, only one or two passers-by
hurried swiftly past here and there, carrying bundles, evidently bent on
making use of that welcome permission to leave this dangerous soil.

The little party walked on in silence, Marguerite's small hand resting
on her husband's arm. Anon they came upon a group of soldiers who were
standing somewhat perfunctorily and irresolutely close by the open gate
of the Fort.

"Tiens c'est l'Anglais!" said one.

"Morbleu! he is on his way back to England," commented another lazily.

The gates of Boulogne had been thrown open to everyone when the Angelus
was rung and the cannon boomed. The general amnesty had been proclaimed,
everyone had the right to come and go as they pleased, the sentinels had
been ordered to challenge no one and to let everyone pass.

No one knew that the great and glorious plans for the complete
annihilation of the Scarlet Pimpernel and his League had come to naught,
that Collot was taking a mighty hoax to Paris, and that the man who had
thought out and nearly carried through the most fiendishly cruel plan
ever conceived for the destruction of an enemy, lay helpless, bound and
gagged, within his own stronghold.

And so the little party, consisting of Sir Percy and Marguerite, Lord
Anthony Dewhurst and my Lord Hastings, passed unchallenged through the
gates of Boulogne.

Outside the precincts of the town they met my Lord Everingham and Sir
Philip Glynde, who had met the Abbe Foucquet outside his little church
and escorted him safely out of the city, whilst Francois and Felicite
with their old mother had been under the charge of other members of the
League.

"We were all in the procession, dressed up in all sorts of ragged
finery, until the last moment," explained Lord Tony to Marguerite as the
entire party now quickly made its way to the harbour. "We did not know
what was going to happen.... All we knew was that we should be wanted
about t