people have the countersign.
If they have it, they can pass, whoever they are."

"They have not," the captain answered at once. "I think you would do
well, sir, to demand the lady's name."

Mademoiselle started forward for a bold stroke just as the superior
officer demanded of her, "The countersign?" As he said the word, she
pronounced distinctly her name:

"Lorance--"

"Enough!" the colonel said instantly. "Pass them through, Guilbert."

The young captain stood in a mull, but no more bewildered than we.

"Mighty queer!" he muttered. "Why didn't she give it to me?"

"Stir yourself, sir!" his superior gave sharp command. "They have the
countersign; pass them through."

XXVIII

_St. Denis--and Navarre!_

As the gates clanged into place behind us, Gilles stopped short in his
tracks to say, as if addressing the darkness before him:

"Am I, Gilles, awake or asleep? Are we in Paris, or are we on the St.
Denis road?"

"Oh, come, come!" Mademoiselle hastened us on, murmuring half to herself
as we went: "O you kind saints! I saw he could not make us out for
friends or foes; I thought my name might turn the scale. Mayenne always
gives a name for a countersign; to-night, by a marvel, it was mine!"

I like not to think often of that five-mile tramp to St. Denis. The road
was dark, rutty, and in places still miry from Monday night's rain.
Strange shadows dogged us all the way. Sometimes they were only bushes
or wayside shrines, but sometimes they moved. This was not now a wolf
country, but two-footed wolves were plenty, and as dangerous. The
hangers-on of the army--beggars, feagues, and footpads--hovered, like
the cowardly beasts of prey they were, about the outskirts of the city.
Did a leaf rustle, we started; did a shambling shape in the gloom whine
for alms, we made ready for onset. Gilles produced from some place of
concealment--his jerkin, or his leggings, or somewhere--a brace of
pistols, and we walked with finger on trigger, taking care, whenever a
rustle in the grass, a shadow in the bushes, seemed to follow us, to
talk loud and cheerfully of common things, the little interests of a
humble station. Thanks to this diplomacy, or the pistol-barrels shining
in the faint starlight, none molested us, though we encountered more
than one mysterious company. We never passed into the gloom under an
arch of trees without the resolution to fight for our lives. We never
came out again into the faint light of the