"Good!" he answered. "Then now for Bareilles, supper, and a full purse; and afterwards, for me, the quietest corner of France! The King will make a fine outcry, and I do not trust one gov--"In a flash Parabere had him by the throat, and dragged him in a grip of iron on to the withers of his horse. Still he managed to utter a cry, and the other rascal, taking the alarm, whipped his horse round, and in a second got a start of twenty paces. Colet, a light man and well mounted, was after him in a trice, and we heard them go ding-dong, ding-dong, through the darkness for a mile or more as it seemed to us. Then a sharp scream came faintly down the wind.
"Good!" Parabere said cheerfully. "Let us be jogging." He had tied his prisoner neck and knees over the saddle before him.
"You heard what he said?" I muttered, as we moved on.
"Perfectly," he answered in the same tone.
"And you think?"
"I think, Grand Master," he replied drily, "that the sooner you are out of La Marche and Bareilles' government the longer you are likely to live."I was quite of that opinion myself, having drawn the same inferences from the words the prisoner had uttered. But for the moment I had no alternative save to go on, and put a bold face on the matter; and accordingly I led the way forward at as fast a pace as the darkness and the jaded state of our horses permitted.
Colet presently joined us, and half an hour later a bunch of lights which appeared on the side of a hill in front proclaimed that we were nearing Gueret. From this point half a league across a rushy bottom and through a ford brought us to the gate, which opened before we summoned it. I had taken care to call to the van one of my men who knew the town; and he guided us quickly, no one challenging us, through a number of foul, narrow streets and under dark archways, among which a stranger must have gone astray. We reached at last a good-sized square, on one side of which--though the rest of the town lay buried in darkness--a large building, which I judged to be Bareilles' residence, exposed a dozen lighted windows to the street. Two or three figures lounged half-seen on the wide stone steps which led up to the entrance, and the rattle of dice, with a murmur of voices, came from the windows. Without a moment's hesitation Idismounted at the foot of the steps, and, bidding La Font and Boisrueil attend me, with three of the servants, I directed Colet to withdraw with the rest and the horses to the farther end of the square.
Dreading nothing so much as that I might lose the advantage of surprise, I put aside two of the men on the steps who would have questioned me, and strode boldly across the stone landing at the head of the flight. Here I found two doors facing me, and foresaw the possibility of error; but I was relieved from the burden of choosing by the sudden appearance at one of them of Bareilles himself. The place was lit only by an oil lamp, and, for a reason best known to himself, he did not look directly at me, but stood with his head half-turned as he said, "Well, Martin, is it done?"I heard the dicers hold their hands to catch the answer, and in the silence a bottle in some unsteady hand clinked against a glass. Through the half-open door behind him it was possible to see a long table, laid and glittering with steel and plate; and all seemed to wait.
Parabere broke the spell. "We are late!" he said in a ringing voice, which startled the governor as if it had been the voice of doom. "But we could not have found you better prepared, it seems. Do you always sup as late as this?"For a moment the villain could not speak, but leaned against the doorpost, with his cheeks gone white and his jaw fallen, the most pitiable spectacle to be conceived. I affected to see nothing, however, but went by him easily, and into the room, drawing off my gauntlets as entered. The dicers, from their seats beside a table on the hearth, gazed at me, turned to stone. I took up a glass, filled it, and drank it off. "Now I am better!" I said.
"But this is not the warmest of welcomes, M. de Bareilles."He muttered something, looking fearfully from one to another of us; and, his hand shaking, filled a glass and pledged me. The wine gave him courage and impudence: he began to speak; and though his hurried sentences and excited manner must have betrayed him to the least suspicious, we pretended to see nothing, but rather to congratulate ourselves on his late hours and timely preparations. And certainly nothing could have seemed more cheerful in comparison with the squalid inn and miry road from which we came than this smiling feast; if death had not seemed to my eyes to lurk behind it.
"I thought it likely that you would lie at Saury," he said, with a ghastly smile.
"And yet made this preparation for us?" I answered politely, yet letting a little of my real mind be seen. "Well, as a fact, M.
Bareilles, save for one thing we should have lain there.""And that thing?" he asked, his tongue almost failing him as he put the question.
"The fact that you have a villain in your company," I answered.
"What?" he stammered.
"A villain, M. le Capitaine Martin," I continued sternly. "You sent him out this morning against the Great Band; instead, he took it upon him to lay a plot for me, from which I have only narrowly escaped.""Martin?"
