ning,
one muttered word, dropped among the savage men with whom I should
be left, and the diamonds hidden in my boot would go neither to the
Cardinal nor back to Mademoiselle--nor would it matter to me whither
they went.

So while the others talked in their taciturn fashion, or sometimes
grinned at my gloomy face, I looked out over the brown woods with eyes
that saw yet did not see. The red squirrel swarming up the trunk, the
startled pigs that rushed away grunting from their feast of mast, the
solitary rider who met us, armed to the teeth, and passed northwards
after whispering with the landlord--all these I saw. But my mind was not
with them. It was groping and feeling about like a hunted mole for
some way of escape. For time pressed. The slope we were on was growing
steeper. By-and-by we fell into a southward valley, and began to follow
it steadily upwards, crossing and recrossing a swiftly rushing stream.
The snow peaks began to be hidden behind the rising bulk of hills that
overhung us, and sometimes we could see nothing before or behind but the
wooded walls of our valley rising sheer and green a thousand paces high
on either hand; with grey rocks half masked by fern and ivy jutting here
and there through the firs and alders.

It was a wild and sombre scene even at that hour, with the mid-day sun
shining on the rushing water and drawing the scent out of the pines;
but I knew that there was worse to come, and sought desperately for some
ruse by which I might at least separate the men. Three were too many;
with one I might deal. At last, when I had cudgelled my brain for
an hour, and almost resigned myself to a sudden charge on the men
single-handed--a last desperate resort--I thought of a plan: dangerous,
too, and almost desperate, but which still seemed to promise something.
It came of my fingers resting, as they lay in my pocket, on the
fragments of the orange sachet; which, without having any particular
design in my mind, I had taken care to bring with me. I had torn the
sachet into four pieces--four corners. As I played mechanically with
them, one of my fingers fitted into one, as into a glove; a second
finger into another. And the plan came.

Before I could move in it, however, I had to wait until we stopped to
bait the flagging horses, which we did about noon at the head of the
valley. Then, pretending to drink from the stream, I managed to secure
unseen a handful of pebbles, slipping them into the same poc