o start at any moment. If we find that the matter is not
absolutely pressing, we will go quietly on board as soon as she is
ready, and sail at once; as there will then be no fear of her being
stopped.

"If, however, I find that the order for our arrest is on the point
of being issued, I will send her down and let her lie beyond Fort
Medoc and Blaye. If it were discovered that I was missing, a few
hours after she had started, it would be suspected at once that I
had gone in the Henriette. Mounted messengers would carry the news
down to both forts, and the boat would be forced to heave to, as
she passed between them.

"Therefore I shall have a light carriage, with two fast horses,
kept in readiness a quarter of a mile outside the town; and a relay
of horses fifteen miles on, which is about halfway, and join the
ship below the forts. If, as may possibly happen, I am suddenly
arrested in the streets, I shall have my servant near me. He will
have his orders, which will be to hurry back home to tell his
mistress to put on the disguise of a peasant woman, that has
already been prepared for her, and to go with her at once to the
carriage; and another man, whom I can also thoroughly trust, is to
come here and say to you, 'It is a bad day.'

"Then you and your sister and the child will at once start to join
my wife. She has most reluctantly consented to carry out this plan
for, as I tell her, it will add to my sufferings a hundredfold,
were she also to be arrested."

By dint of great exertions the Henriette was unloaded by the
following evening and, half an hour after her last bale was ashore,
she dropped down the river with the tide. She was to anchor off a
small village, two miles beyond Fort Medoc; and if inquiry was made
as to why she stopped there, Lefaux was to say that he was to take
in some wine that Monsieur Flambard had bought from a large grower
in that district, and that the lugger was then going to Charente to
fill up with brandy for Havre.

Leigh had, the day before, gone with the merchant into the
extensive cellars which adjoined the house.

"There is not a man here," Monsieur Flambard said, "who would not
do all in his power for me. Some of them have been with the firm
nearly all their lives. I treat them well, and I am happy to say
that not one of them has taken any part in our last troubles.
Indeed, I am told that is one of the matters that, if I am
arrested, will be brought against me. It will be said