fall from
the carriage.

"Shall I drive on, Mademoiselle?" inquired Blaise from the box.

But without answering him she had stepped down into the mud, and was
standing bare-headed in the rain beside the body of Caron.

Silently, she stooped and groped for his heart. It was beating
vigorously enough, she thought. She stooped lower and taking him under
the arms, she half bore, half dragged him to the side of the road, as
if the thin, bare hedge were capable of affording him shelter. There
she stood a moment looking down at him. Then with a sob she suddenly
stooped, and careless of the eyes observing her, she kissed him full
upon the mouth.

A second later she fled like a frightened thing back to the carriage,
and, closing the door, she called in a strangled voice too drive on.

She paid little heed to the praise that was being bestowed upon her by
her mother--who had seen nothing of the kiss. But she lay back in her
corner of the coach, and now her lashes were wet at the thought of Caron
lying out there in the road. Now her cheeks grew red with shame at the
thought that she, the nobly-born Mademoiselle de Bellecour, should have
allowed even pity to have so far overcome her as to have caused her to
touch with her lips the lips of a low-bred revolutionist.

CHAPTER XIV. THE COURIER

It was well for La Boulaye that he had tethered his horse to a tree
before approaching the coach. That solitary beast standing by the
roadside in the deepening gloom attracted the attention of his
followers, when--a half-hour or so later--they rode that way, making for
Liege, as La Boulaye had bidden them.

At their approach the animal neighed, and Garin, hearing the sound,
reined in and peered forward into the gloom, to descry the horse's head
and back outlined above the blur of the hedge. His men halted behind him
whilst he approached the riderless beast and made--as well as he could
in the darkness--an examination of the saddle. One holster he found
empty, at which he concluded that the rider, whoever he had been, had
met with trouble; from the other he drew a heavy pistol, which, however,
gave him no clue.

"Get down," he ordered his men, "and search the roads hereabouts. I'll
wager a horse to a horseshoe that you will find a body somewhere."

He was obeyed, and presently a cry from one of the searchers announced a
discovery. It was succeeded by another exclamation.

"Sacre nom!" swore the trooper. "It is the Citizen-dep