ight be. I
cannot tell you how much in these doubtings and wanderings I became
attached to Amante. I have sometimes feared since, lest I cared for her
only because she was so necessary to my own safety; but, no! it was not
so; or not so only, or principally. She said once that she was flying
for her own life as well as for mine; but we dared not speak much on
our danger, or on the horrors that had gone before. We planned a little
what was to be our future course; but even for that we did not look
forward long; how could we, when every day we scarcely knew if we
should see the sun go down? For Amante knew or conjectured far more
than I did of the atrocity of the gang to which M. de la Tourelle
belonged; and every now and then, just as we seemed to be sinking into
the calm of security, we fell upon traces of a pursuit after us in all
directions. Once I remember--we must have been nearly three weeks
wearily walking through unfrequented ways, day after day, not daring to
make inquiry as to our whereabouts, nor yet to seem purposeless in our
wanderings--we came to a kind of lonely roadside farrier's and
blacksmith's. I was so tired, that Amante declared that, come what
might, we would stay there all night; and accordingly she entered the
house, and boldly announced herself as a travelling tailor, ready to do
any odd jobs of work that might be required, for a night's lodging and
food for herself and wife. She had adopted this plan once or twice
before, and with good success; for her father had been a tailor in
Rouen, and as a girl she had often helped him with his work, and knew
the tailors' slang and habits, down to the particular whistle and cry
which in France tells so much to those of a trade. At this
blacksmith's, as at most other solitary houses far away from a town,
there was not only a store of men's clothes laid by as wanting mending
when the housewife could afford time, but there was a natural craving
after news from a distance, such news as a wandering tailor is bound to
furnish. The early November afternoon was closing into evening, as we
sat down, she cross-legged on the great table in the blacksmith's
kitchen, drawn close to the window, I close behind her, sewing at
another part of the same garment, and from time to time well scolded by
my seeming husband. All at once she turned round to speak to me. It was
only one word, 'Courage!' I had seen nothing; I sat out of the light;
but I turned sick for an instant, and