, ye thieving loons! Come on!"

It was a plain invitation; yet they misunderstood it so utterly as to
take to their heels, with Hans after them, he shouting "Stop thieves!"
and they howling with fear and pain as they ran.

CHAPTER XLI

Denys, placed in the middle of his companions, lest he should be so mad
as attempt escape was carried off in an agony of grief and remorse. For
his sake Gerard had abandoned the German route to Rome; and what was his
reward? left all alone in the centre of Burgundy. This was the thought
which maddened Denys most, and made him now rave at heaven and earth,
now fall into a gloomy silence so savage and sinister that it was deemed
prudent to disarm him. They caught up their leader just outside the
town, and the whole cavalcade drew up and baited at the "Tete d'Or."

The young landlady, though much occupied with the count, and still
more with the bastard, caught sight of Denys, and asked him somewhat
anxiously what had become of his young companion?

Denys, with a burst of grief, told her all, and prayed her to send after
Gerard. "Now he is parted from me, he will maybe listen to my rede,"
said he; "poor wretch, he loves not solitude."

The landlady gave a toss of her head. "I trow I have been somewhat
over-kind already," said she, and turned rather red.

"You will not?"

"Not I."

"Then,"--and he poured a volley of curses and abuse upon her.

She turned her back upon him, and went off whimpering, and Saying she
was not used to be cursed at; and ordered her hind to saddle two mules.

Denys went north with his troop, mute and drooping over his saddle,
and quite unknown to him, that veracious young lady made an equestrian
toilet in only forty minutes, she being really in a hurry, and spurred
away with her servant in the opposite direction.

At dark, after a long march, the bastard and his men reached "The White
Hart;" their arrival caused a prodigious bustle, and it was some time
before Manon discovered her old friend among so many. When she did, she
showed it only by heightened colour. She did not claim the acquaintance.
The poor soul was already beginning to scorn.

"The base degrees by which she did ascend."

Denys saw but could not smile. The inn reminded him too much of Gerard.

Ere the night closed the wind changed. She looked into the room and
beckoned him with her finger. He rose sulkily, and his guards with him.

"Nay, I would speak a word to thee in private."

S