he _Golden Rod_ is waiting with her anchor apeak
and her cargo aboard. Tell him what you like, so long as you make him
come."

"Then we must come at once," said De Catinat, as he listened to the
cordial message which was conveyed to his uncle. "To-night the orders
will be out, and to-morrow it may be too late."

"But my business!" cried the merchant.

"Take what valuables you can, and leave the rest. Better that than lose
all, and liberty into the bargain."

And so at last it was arranged. That very night, within five minutes of
the closing of the gates, there passed out of Paris a small party of
five, three upon horseback, and two in a closed carriage which bore
several weighty boxes upon the top. They were the first leaves flying
before the hurricane, the earliest of that great multitude who were
within the next few months to stream along every road which led from
France, finding their journey's end too often in galley, dungeon and
torture chamber, and yet flooding over the frontiers in numbers
sufficient to change the industries and modify the characters of all the
neighbouring peoples. Like the Israelites of old, they had been driven
from their homes at the bidding of an angry king, who, even while he
exiled them, threw every difficulty in the way of their departure. Like
them, too, there were none of them who could hope to reach their
promised land without grievous wanderings, penniless, friendless, and
destitute. What passages befell these pilgrims in their travels, what
dangers they met, and overcame in the land of the Swiss, on the Rhine,
among the Walloons, in England, in Ireland, in Berlin, and even in
far-off Russia, has still to be written. This one little group,
however, whom we know, we may follow in their venturesome journey, and
see the chances which befell them upon that great continent which had
lain fallow for so long, sown only with the weeds of humanity, but which
was now at last about to quicken into such glorious life.

PART II.

IN THE NEW WORLD.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE START OF THE "GOLDEN ROD."

Thanks to the early tidings which the guardsman had brought with him,
his little party was now ahead of the news. As they passed through the
village of Louvier in the early morning they caught a glimpse of a naked
corpse upon a dunghill, and were told by a grinning watchman that it was
that of a Huguenot who had died impenitent, but that was a common enough
occurrence alr