go. All
the roaming instinct in me was roused. I, a nomad, had stayed too long
in one stale place; I must be moving on. A feverish longing seized me;
inertia became unbearable; the restless sea called me louder and
louder, thundering on the breakwater; the gulls, wheeling above the
arsenal at dawn, screamed a challenge.

Leave of absence, and permission to travel pending acceptance of my
resignation, I asked for and obtained before the stable trumpets awoke
my comrade from his heavy slumber by the barrack stove.

I made my packet--not much--a few threadbare garments folded around
her letters, one to mark each miserable day that had passed since I
spurred my horse out of Trecourt on the track of the wickedest man I
ever knew.

Speed awoke with the trumpets, and stared at me where I knelt before
the stove in my civilian clothes, strapping up my little packet.

"Oh," he said, briefly, "I knew you were going."

"So did I," I replied. "Will you ride to Trecourt with me? I have
two weeks' permission for you."

He had no clothing but the uniform he wore, and no baggage except a
razor, a shirt, a tooth-brush, and a bundle of letters, all written on
Madame de Vassart's crested paper, but not signed by her.

We bolted our breakfast of soup and black bread, and bawled for our
horses, almost crazed with impatience, now that the moment had come at
last.

"Good-bye!" shouted the shivering dragoon officers, wistfully, as we
wheeled our horses and spurred, clattering, towards the black gates.
"Good-bye and good luck! We drink to those you love, comrades!"

"And they shall drink to you! Good-bye! Good-bye!" we cried, till the
salt sea-wind tore the words from our teeth and bowed our heads as we
galloped through the suburbs and out into the icy high-road, where,
above us, the telegraph-wires sang their whirring dirge, and the wind
in the gorse whistled, and the distant forest sounded and resounded
with the gale's wailing.

On, on, hammering the flinty road with steel-shod hoofs, racing with
the racing clouds, thundering across the pontoon, where benumbed
soldiers huddled to stare, then bounding forward through the narrow
lanes of hamlets, where pinched faces peered out at us from hovels,
and gaunt dogs fled from us into the frozen hedge.

Far ahead we caught sight of the smoke of a locomotive.

"Landerneau!" gasped Speed. "Ride hard, Scarlett!"

The station-master saw us and halted the moving train at a frantic
signal f