troop of the
marechaussee from Rennes descended upon Gavrillac this morning in quest
of you. They turned the chateau and the village inside out, and at
last discovered that you were due to return with a horse hired from the
Breton arme. So they have taken up their quarters at the inn to wait
for you. I have been here all the afternoon on the lookout to warn you
against walking into that trap."

"My dear Aline! That I should have been the cause of so much concern and
trouble!"

"Never mind that. It is not important."

"On the contrary; it is the most important part of what you tell me. It
is the rest that is unimportant."

"Do you realize that they have come to arrest you?" she asked him, with
increasing impatience. "You are wanted for sedition, and upon a warrant
from M. de Lesdiguieres."

"Sedition?" quoth he, and his thoughts flew to that business at Nantes.
It was impossible they could have had news of it in Rennes and acted
upon it in so short a time.

"Yes, sedition. The sedition of that wicked speech of yours at Rennes on
Wednesday."

"Oh, that!" said he. "Pooh!" His note of relief might have told her,
had she been more attentive, that he had to fear the consequences of a
greater wickedness committed since. "Why, that was nothing."

"Nothing?"

"I almost suspect that the real intentions of these gentlemen of the
marechaussee have been misunderstood. Most probably they have come to
thank me on M. de Lesdiguieres' behalf. I restrained the people when
they would have burnt the Palais and himself inside it."

"After you had first incited them to do it. I suppose you were afraid of
your work. You drew back at the last moment. But you said things of
M. de Lesdiguieres, if you are correctly reported, which he will never
forgive."

"I see," said Andre-Louis, and he fell into thought.

But Mlle. de Kercadiou had already done what thinking was necessary, and
her alert young mind had settled all that was to be done.

"You must not go into Gavrillac," she told him, "and you must get down
from your horse, and let me take it. I will stable it at the chateau
to-night. And sometime to-morrow afternoon, by when you should be well
away, I will return it to the Breton arme."

"Oh, but that is impossible."

"Impossible? Why?"

"For several reasons. One of them is that you haven't considered what
will happen to you if you do such a thing."

"To me? Do you suppose I am afraid of that pack of oafs sent by M.
Les