could
command, feeling all the while that he did not want to come and you
could have done as well without him. So you must put up with my company
as gracefully as you can, remembering that you can drop me as soon as
you are in port."

And surely, none other could have occupied an uncomfortable position so
gracefully.

Barebone found that he had not much to do. He soon accommodated himself
to a position which required nothing more active than a ready ear and a
gracious patience. For, day by day--almost hour by hour--it was his lot
to listen to protestations of loyalty to a cause which smouldered
none the less hotly because it was hidden from the sight of the Prince
President's spies.

And, as Colville had predicted, Barebone sobered down. He would ride
now, hour after hour, in silence, whereas at the beginning of the
journey he had talked gaily enough, seeing a hundred humorous incidents
in the passing events of the day; laughing at the recollection of an
interview with some provincial notable who had fallen behind the times,
or jesting readily enough with such as showed a turn for joking on the
road.

But now the unreality of his singular change of fortune was vanishing.
Every village priest who came after dark to take a glass of wine with
them at their inn sent it farther into the past, every provincial noble
greeting him on the step of his remote and quiet house added a note to
the drumming reality which dominated his waking moments and disturbed
his sleep at night.

Day by day they rode on, passing through two or three villages between
such halts as were needed by the horses. At every hamlet, in the large
villages, where they rested and had their food, at the remote little
town where they passed a night, there was always some one expecting
them, who came and talked of the weather and more or less skilfully
brought in the numeral nineteen. "Nineteen! Nineteen!" It was a
watchword all over France.

Long before, on the banks of the Dordogne, Loo had asked his companion
why that word had been selected--what it meant.

"It means Louis XIX.," replied Dormer Colville, gravely.

And now, as they rode through a country so rural, so thinly populated
and remote that nothing like it may be found in these crowded islands,
the number seemed to follow them; or, rather, to pass on before them and
await their coming.

Often Colville would point silently with his whip to the numerals,
scrawled on a gate-post or written a