mp, observed something which
struck him with horror.

The man was evidently desperately wounded. It was strange indeed that
he could still sit there and flick his whip with so terrible an injury.
In the back of his great red coat, just under the left shoulder-blade,
was a gash in the cloth, where some weapon had passed, and all round was
a wide patch of dark scarlet which told its own tale. Nor was this all.
As he raised his whip, the moonlight shone upon his hand, and De Catinat
saw with a shudder that it also was splashed and clogged with blood.
The guardsman craned his neck to catch a glimpse of the man's face; but
his broad-brimmed hat was drawn low, and the high collar of his
driving-coat was raised, so that his features were in the shadow.
This silent man in front of him, with the horrible marks upon his
person, sent a chill to De Catinat's valiant heart, and he muttered over
one of Marot's Huguenot psalms; for who but the foul fiend himself would
drive a coach with those crimsoned hands and with a sword driven through
his body?

And now they had come to a spot where the main road ran onwards, but a
smaller side track wound away down the steep slope of a hill, and so in
the direction of the Seine. The advance-guard had kept to the main
road, and the two horsemen on either side were trotting in the same
direction, when, to De Catinat's amazement, the carriage suddenly
swerved to one side, and in an instant plunged down the steep incline,
the two stout horses galloping at their topmost speed, the coachman
standing up and lashing furiously at them, and the clumsy old vehicle
bounding along in a way which threw him backwards and forwards from one
seat to the other. Behind him he could hear a shout of consternation
from the escort, and then the rush of galloping hoofs. Away they flew,
the roadside poplars dancing past at either window, the horses
thundering along with their stomachs to the earth, and that demon driver
still waving those horrible red hands in the moonlight and screaming out
to the maddened steeds. Sometimes the carriage jolted one way,
sometimes another, swaying furiously, and running on two side wheels as
though it must every instant go over. And yet, fast as they went, their
pursuers went faster still. The rattle of their hoofs was at their very
backs, and suddenly at one of the windows there came into view the red,
distended nostrils of a horse. Slowly it drew forward, the muzzle, the
eye,