CHAPTER V - FREE--WITH A BROKEN WING

"I swear I will not ask your meaning in it: I do believe yourself against yourself, And will henceforward rather die than doubt." TENNYSON, _Geraint and Enid_.

(1)

The first moments of Laurent's grief were savage. He stood for some time at the window, his hands clenched together before him, his head against the grey panelling at the side, choking down the spasms of grief and fury which rose in his throat. He could not bear to look at the silent room. At last he stumbled over to Aymar's deserted bed and flung himself there, face downwards. God only knew where Aymar would lie to-night!

But very soon his mind was plotting the details of his own escape. This window here by Aymar's bed, after dark, because it looked out round the corner, not on the facade; it would be quite easy. If he could only have elicited from L'Oiseleur where he intended to go! But Aymar seemed to have no plan--how could he? The fiat had been to them both like an unforeseen sentence of death.

Laurent stirred and gripped the pillow--Aymar's pillow--where his face was buried. The remembrance of the offer of Aymar's cross--a death-bed action--was not comforting. That Aymar could attempt such a thing showed--what did it show? Laurent clutched the pillow harder. For L'Oiseleur had at last definitely confessed that he could not clear himself. Did he then know himself to be irretrievably ruined over this black business, in which, after all, that shadowy de Fresne had not played the villain? And could it be that in consequence he contemplated taking his own life? Was that why he had tried to bestow on his friend that significant gift, and was that why he had said: "You will never see me again"?

Laurent sprang up and threw open the window by the bed. The sentry very rarely paced round this corner. If he did, there was a convenient bush almost under the window. And the prisoner had not wasted his opportunities for observation during his walks on the terrace, so that he knew roughly the extent and lie of M. d'Arbelles' domain, was aware that it was not hampered with walls, and had a very good idea at what points the sentries were posted. But there were hours yet to get through before dark.

At about eight o'clock, as he was sitting in gloom and fever, watching the rain which had now come on, there unexpectedly entered to him Lieutenant Rigault. He looked concerned and somewhat shamefaced, but Laurent soon discovered that this embarrassment was not, as he at first supposed, on Aymar's account, but on his, Laurent's. The Colonel, it appeared, had given orders that one of the old dungeons which survived from the original château was to be prepared for M. de Courtomer's reception, but this retreat was in such a condition that it could not be ready till the morrow. Rigault feared, however, that this would be M. de Courtomer's last night in his present quarters.

Laurent (who was privately of the same opinion), while thanking him for the interest he took in his fate, intimated that he considered no dungeon was deep enough for Colonel Guitton to expiate the turning out of a wounded prisoner, scarcely able to stand, to die, perhaps, of exposure. But the young chasseur, while admitting that this had seemed to him rather inhuman, asked whether Laurent, in their place, would be disposed to condone treachery by making much of a traitor.

"Making much of!" exclaimed Laurent contemptuously. "You haven't run much risk of that at Arbelles, have you? What about yesterday's proceedings?--Were you there?"

"We all were; we had to be--orders. But do not go away with the idea, pray, Monsieur de Courtomer"--as Monsieur de Courtomer bent upon him a very pregnant look--"that the Colonel had it all his own way at that interview! There is not much of the Early Christian martyr about the modern Saint Sebas----I beg your pardon! He said some pretty stinging things himself."

"He could hardly say anything stinging enough in reply to that suggestion that he should accept a commission with you!"

"Oh, he simply said he would rather die than do that. It was not very judicious," commented Rigault reflectively, "because then the Colonel was able to retort, 'I daresay you would rather like me to have you shot, since you think, no doubt, that the balls of an enemy firing-party would efface the marks of your own. I should never do _that_; a soldier's death is too good for you.' And," finished the young officer, as Laurent flushed hotly, "if the facts are as Colonel Richard reported them, I quite agree with that opinion."

"If you talked till next year, Monsieur," retorted Laurent scornfully and impolitely, "you would not get me to believe that it is Colonel Guitton's excessive highmindedness which has led him to do what he has done to-day! He has never forgiven M. de la Rocheterie for baulking him over du Tremblay's plans. There is personal vengeance behind his abominable action."

"Yes," said Rigault thoughtfully, "I believe you are right. It is not so much what La Rocheterie has done, as what he refused to do. . . . But, with regard to his turning out, he had his money, you know, Monsieur de Courtomer. He could have gone to the village inn, if he had chosen, instead of starting off to nowhere along the Saint-Caradec road."

Laurent became very attentive. "He went along the Saint-Caradec road?"

"Yes. He turned to the right at the château gates."

"You are sure of that? Naturally I am interested to know where he has gone."

"Naturally. Yes, I know he did. The fact is," said Lieutenant Rigault, looking out of the window, "that I happened to be in the avenue at the time--by pure chance, I assure you; I was not there as a spectator of . . . misfortune. Well, when La Rocheterie got to the gates--he had no escort then--the sentry would not let him pass; evidently he had no orders to that effect. I foresaw that he might be turned back, and have to come up the avenue again, and that would have been cruel. So I hurried down and told the sentry that he was released; and I saw, therefore, that he turned along the Saint-Caradec road."

At that absence of explicit orders--intentional, he felt sure--Laurent had ground his teeth. And how many _had_ been in the avenue to watch him? "I wonder he ever reached the gates at all," he muttered savagely. "Did he look very much exhausted?"

"I must confess that I would not have backed him to go much farther," admitted the young Imperialist. "Indeed, I think he was holding on to the gate when I got there, but when he saw me he stood up straight and thanked me very civilly." He paused a moment, and then added, it seemed against his will, "I admit that I am puzzled by him. I cannot square what he has done with . . . what he seems to be."

But Laurent was not so elated by this confession as he might have been in earlier days. What did it matter now? He said nothing, and Rigault went on, "I watched him to the bend--about a furlong it is--he was walking very slowly, but fairly steadily."

"What is along that road?" enquired Laurent in a gloomy and exasperated voice.

"Nothing till you come to Saint-Caradec. It is not a high road, properly speaking, but the country people sometimes use it. La Rocheterie might get a lift in a farmer's cart."

"And if not?"

"I don't know," replied the other, also rather gloomily. He gave a short sigh. "I wish it had not happened. . . . As to the Colonel's intentions with regard to you, we are going to raise a strong protest directly there is a chance of being listened to, so we must hope for the best."

To this evidence of good feeling Laurent made no response whatever; he was with Aymar in the rain, on the road that led to nowhere. Rigault went to the door. And when Laurent, staring forlornly through the blurred window, said to himself, "If only I knew where he was!" he had really forgotten the Imperialist's presence.

He was reminded of it by a touch on the shoulder. The young officer had recrossed the space between them. And he now remarked to the prisoner in a rather strange and hurried voice, "The windows of this room are only sixteen feet from the ground."

"I calculated that they would be about that," returned M. de Courtomer. And then, suddenly realizing what a surprising thing had just taken place, he turned and stared at the speaker. Lieutenant Rigault of the garrison of Arbelles got noticeably red, somehow found the captive's hand, gulped out very low "Good luck!" and bolted for the door.

(2)

Many times during the last few weeks had Laurent told himself how easy it would be to escape from captivity if he were ever to cast his thoughts that way. Yet, in the event, the simplicity of his departure rather staggered him; for, twenty minutes after he had clung bat-like to the sill of the window by which Vert-Vert also had left the château, he was outside the domain of M. le Baron d'Arbelles altogether, and was creeping, with looks to right and left, along the dim pallor of the Saint-Caradec road.

He had encountered no obstacles of any kind whatever, and only a minute or so of suspense, while the sentry stood meditating on the other side of the bush which momentarily concealed the acrobat after his drop. It was a dark night, which would have been auspicious for an ordinary fugitive, but was not so fortunate for a fugitive who was searching for someone else. However, Aymar must be somewhere along this road (always supposing that he had not got a lift) because he would never have had the strength to climb its high banks even if he wished to leave it.

But soon, a little to Laurent's dismay, the bank and hedge on his left broke into what seemed to be a thicket of some extent. Instantly he felt sure that Aymar had turned in there, and that he should find him. He went in. But under the trees it was so dark that he began to stumble. He listened, but only heard gently running water; he called very softly but without result. He dared not go on for fear L'Oiseleur should be there after all, asleep or unconscious; yet he could not search the thicket thoroughly until it grew lighter. So, feeling, unreasonably enough, that he was somehow betraying his quest, he lay down in a dry ditch and presently swam off into an uncomfortable slumber.

But before the first thrush began he had hunted through every foot of the coppice. L'Oiseleur was not there--not a trace of him. All these hours, then, had been wasted; while Aymar--in what plight was he by now? The night had not been warm.

Horribly disappointed and anxious, Laurent stood on the side of the thicket farthest from Arbelles and surveyed the prospect. The tiny wood gave on to rolling country, fields of large extent. He could not free himself from the conviction that Aymar had been in the wood at some time, if only to rest. By which way would he have left it in that case--by the fields or by the road? It seemed to Laurent that he must search both exits. He resolved that he would first cover a section of the road--the more hazardous proceeding for himself--and then search the field back again to the copse. After that it would become a choice between the next section of the road and the open country.

Looking to see that the coast was clear, he ran cautiously up the road, glancing to either side as he went. It was perfectly empty save for a meditative rabbit in the middle, who whisked off at his step; it gave, in fact, in the morning stillness, between its holly hedges, the impression of not being meant for human foot at all.

He clambered over a gate into the field, and was just setting his face once more for the thicket, when something about a haystack not far off caught his eye. Part of it had been sliced away, but not completely, so that there still remained, about two feet from the ground, a ledge rather wider than a man's body. And on this ledge a man was lying. . . .

Laurent stood stock still, his heart thumping suffocatingly. The next moment he was at the refuge so nearly missed. Aymar was lying slightly curled up, his face towards the wall of hay, his head pillowed on his bent arm--as a tired boy might lie. Laurent stooped over him. Yes, thank God, he was breathing naturally--in fact, he seemed to be sound asleep.

But he looked deadly weary. Laurent touched his left hand, lying loosely on his breast; it was very cold. So he took off his own coat and spread it over him, and, reluctant to wake him yet, squatted down beside him on the grass just out of his line of vision, and said to himself contentedly, "I knew I should find him!"

He had not been there, however, for more than five minutes or so when the sleeper stirred, sighed, and woke; then, realizing that there was a covering over him where covering had been none, raised himself on an elbow and gazed round in bewilderment.

"Good morning," observed Laurent, getting up and coming into view. "I have kept my word, you see. And I have brought you your breakfast." Voluntarily or involuntarily, he had adopted a thoroughly British method of cloaking his feelings. Aymar gave an exclamation and, falling back against the hay, stared as if he hardly knew him. At last, rather weakly, he began to laugh.

"I told you I should do it," said Laurent cheerfully, very much pleased with the success of his little coup de théâtre. But on that he suddenly found himself deprived of further speech. He went down on his knees by the ledge of hay and mutely embraced him, French fashion; after which he began to fumble in his pocket for the provisions he had brought--the major part of his own supper.

". . . How did you do it, Laurent--how did you do it?" Aymar was asking incredulously.

"I climbed out of the window," responded the adventurer briefly. "Have you had anything to eat since you left yesterday?"

"I was not hungry. I had the brandy, you know."

"Heavens above, you must be starving! Eat this quickly. No, first----Is the eau-de-vie in this pocket?"

"Always that brandy-flask," commented Aymar, trying to smile, as, supporting himself on an elbow, he took the little cup. But his hand shook so much that Laurent caught it from him with an exclamation, and, seating himself on the ledge, slipped an arm round his ex-patient and supported him while he held the cup to his lips. There was re-awakened fury in his heart.

"This is like old times," remarked L'Oiseleur, and lay still a moment against his friend's shoulder.

"There's only one alleviation," muttered Laurent, with some of the fury audible in his voice, "and that is, that your release was undoubtedly vengeance on that scoundrel's part. Viewed in that light, it is almost a compliment."

"Oh, are you speaking of Guitton?" murmured Aymar. "I had forgotten him for the moment. I was thinking about someone better worth considering." He caught at the hand that had held the cup, and pulled it to him. "I was convinced that I should never see you again, Laurent. . . . Shall I ever be able to repay you?"

"I don't know what you are talking about," said Laurent, as gruffly as any of his English forbears, but he returned the pressure of the two cold hands which held his. "Now eat; and when you have eaten you can tell me how you found the strength to get so far."

So Aymar ate, when Laurent had consented to do the same, and told him. It appeared that he _had_ gone into the copse, and been there for hours, perhaps--he did not seem sure. Nor was he, evidently, quite clear whether he had lost consciousness there or not; but he admitted that he had thought, "quite erroneously," that he could not possibly go farther. . . . However, towards evening he made another effort, drank some water, and went on by the field way, rather blindly, his only object being to put as much distance between himself and Arbelles as he could. In the twilight he almost stumbled into the haystack, and having thus fortunately come on it, subsided there.

"Well, thank God for the haystack," observed Laurent. "Were you cold in the night? It's horribly open here."

"I am never very warm now," said Aymar simply. "Yes, it is open. And that is why, mon ami, you have stayed here long enough. It is high time you went on, for if they have not discovered your absence already----"

But Laurent exclaimed, as the speaker had once incautiously done to Guitton, "For what do you take me?" And he continued with warmth, "Why do you suppose I was at the trouble of wriggling out of that window? Directly you feel able we will go on (though I shall not be missed till breakfast-time) and as you know the district a little, perhaps you can think of a suitable place to make for. Was there not some woman from your part of the country? . . . No, Aymar, really it is no use arguing--it only wastes time. Remember that I have English blood in me, and that it is quite as obstinate as your Norse. I only give in to you when I am in awe of you--which at this moment I am not."

So Aymar himself surrendered, and they started, he on Laurent's arm, across the great field towards another little wood, both as affording cover and as being in the direction of the farm of La Baussaine, where lived this woman from Sessignes who had known Aymar all his life, and had married and settled and achieved widowhood in this region. Provided, said Aymar, that her elder son, a soldier of the Imperial Guard, were not at home--which in existing circumstances was practically impossible--she would be only too glad to give them shelter.

In the little wood Laurent made his companion sit down and rest, for even the short, sustained exertion had rendered him very breathless. Indeed to progress thus, in stages, was the only possible method. Even so, after about an hour, the proceeding was making nearly intolerable demands on his little stock of strength. The stages began to get shorter, the rests longer. Twice there were gates to climb, once a hedge to push through, once retirement into a ditch was thought prudent to avoid a herdsman. And when they came forth from this retreat they had still, Aymar calculated, a good mile and a half to go; on hearing which, and surveying the speaker, Laurent wondered rather despairingly whether they would not have to try to find a nearer refuge.

A large, uncompromising drop of rain on his nose startled him at that moment, and he looked up. Was it possible--a thunderstorm on a morning like this? However, one could not argue about its unfitness; the point was to prevent Aymar from being instantly soaked to the skin. In the middle of the open pasture which they were skirting he espied a long, low object that looked like the shelter over a sheep trough, save that, fortunately, there was no trough beneath it now.

"Quick, Aymar!" he exclaimed, almost dragging him along. They had to crawl in on hands and knees, but once inside it was just possible for Laurent, at all events, to sit upright. Aymar lay down at full length, his head on his friend's knee, and shut his eyes. And then the rain descended.

"Talking about rain," observed Laurent suddenly, "how wet did you get yesterday?"

"I don't know," replied Aymar. "I did not trouble about it. You talk as if I were a girl, my dear Laurent. Do you suppose I have not slept scores of times in the open before--and in the rain, too? I am a Chouan . . . that is to say, I was," he added in a lower tone, and fell silent.

"I wonder if a thunderstorm ever came à propos," he remarked a few moments later to the accompaniment of the first peal, and shivered suddenly.

Laurent looked down at him rather unhappily. "I am afraid you must be horribly tired, and the devil knows how long this storm is going on. I wish we had something left to eat."

But Aymar answered, without opening his eyes, in a voice gone suddenly remote and drowsy, "I am neither tired nor hungry--a little cold, that is all. I think I am going to sleep."

Perhaps that was the best thing that could happen to him, and if it did, Laurent saw some chance of slipping off his own coat and wrapping it round him. But he had had little sleep himself that night, and, lulled by the downpour on the shingled roof, he half dozed off as he sat there. He was recalled by a violent shiver running through the shoulders resting against his knees.

"That letter," said their owner reflectively. "That letter . . . I am glad I burnt it. It was the only way to cleanse it. It had been in his horrible hands all this while." Here he shivered again, but went on almost immediately, his eyes fixed on some point out in the rainy landscape, "Yes, he had it all the time, and never guessed. And downstairs, for all his questioning . . . I could hardly bear it . . . he never found out."

"That was fortunate," murmured Laurent vaguely, uncertain whether Aymar were speaking to himself, or expecting a reply. But speculation gave way to alarm the next moment, when a third shudder drove through L'Oiseleur's body, and his teeth clicked together.

"Mon ami, what is the matter with you? Are you so cold as that? Come up closer to me. Confound this rain!" And he edged himself nearer, till he could get his companion into his arms. Aymar's hands were as cold as ice, but there was a faint flush on either cheek.

"I saw the Colonel looking at my wrists once," he began again, with a complete absence of his usual extreme reserve. "He said . . . he said it was not _there_ that he should like to put a rope. . . ." The narrator gave a sort of laugh. "It was round here!" He carried his hand to his throat, and a double flicker of lightning ran through the shelter as though to emphasize this disclosure.

"Damn him!" exclaimed Laurent passionately, while the long roll reverberated overhead.

"I suppose he might have done it if he had chosen," proceeded Aymar with the same uncanny fluency. "We could not either of us have prevented him, could we, Laurent? They laughed, some of them. . . . I did want very much to stand all the time . . . but I was not able to. I had to sit down. And I did not mean to lose my temper, but I did--once--and it only made it worse for me, because----" But his teeth were now chattering so that he could get no further.

"Oh, don't try to talk!" cried Laurent. "And why, in God's name, are you shivering like this?"

For his brief experience of nursing had been mainly surgical, and he had never imagined that shivering was other than a semi-voluntary action. But Aymar's whole body was beginning to be convulsed every few seconds by a sort of galvanic shock, and his teeth were now going like castanets, to the complete exclusion of any more confidences. Laurent, really frightened, stripped off his own coat and wrapped it round him, attempted to pour brandy between the chattering teeth, most of it being spilled in the process, and held him as closely as he could to the warmth of his own body.

Gradually the fit passed, but it had so exhausted its already spent victim that he lay in Laurent's hold inert, with closed eyes. Whether this seizure were due to last night's exposure or no, it was clear to the perplexed Laurent that Aymar was going to be ill--was ill already, or he would never have volunteered those revelations--and they were nothing like in safety yet. For all the splendid suppleness that had once been his, L'Oiseleur, lying across his knees like this, seemed uncommonly heavy; he knew that he could not carry him more than a few yards.

A ray of sunshine suddenly struck on to the head on his arm. The living bronze glowed (as once in the detested cart) and, looking up, Laurent realized that the storm was over. But of what use was that now? However, he must do his best.

"Aymar," he said, stooping to his ear, "it has stopped raining, and we must go on. Can you hear me?"

"Yes," answered Aymar--and actually began to struggle up. "Yes--I'll try . . ."

(3)

"And so M. Perrelet, back at Arbelles, is the nearest doctor?" repeated Laurent thoughtfully, looking at Mme Allard.

Madeleine Allard was forty-nine years of age and still comely. She had lost her husband, but she had at La Baussaine six cows, ten pigs, fifty-five hens, and an idiot son. To her that afternoon as she was kneading bread had entered her afflicted offspring making signs that there were strangers approaching. Now one of these strangers--only to Madeleine he was no stranger at all--was ensconced in her absent son Jérôme's bed, and the other was standing in her kitchen making enquiries about medical aid, which would certainly have to be procured somehow.

"Could you send for M. Perrelet then, Madame?" asked Laurent.

"I could send Jeannot with a letter, Monsieur--he could not take a message, poor boy. He is not as other boys. And, as villages frighten him, he would probably deliver the letter at the wrong house, or perhaps not at all. Yet certainly M. le Vicomte must have a doctor, and as soon as possible.--Could you not go for M. Perrelet yourself, Monsieur?"

"Yes, of course, I _could_," said Laurent reflectively. There did seem something ironical in the prospect of abandoning his friend, whom he had escaped to find, and risking, for his sake, the experience of a much more rigorous captivity. He would probably never succeed in reaching the village, for the whole garrison of Arbelles must be on the alert about him; still, even if he were retaken, he could doubtless contrive to get a message to the surgeon (who was to return, he knew, that evening). "Yes," he resumed, "I will go directly it is dusk--if M. de la Rocheterie is not better."

Mme Allard intimated that in her opinion there was small hope of that. Aymar's condition had deeply shocked her. To Laurent, indeed, it was still something of a mystery how he had succeeded in transporting him from the sheep-shelter to La Baussaine, seeing that no real reliance could be placed on his legs, and less and less on the directing brain. And the effort had tired Laurent himself more than a little, as Mme Allard for all her preoccupation now observed, and she begged him to eat and sleep; should the soldiers come she could very quickly hide him under the cider-press . . . but where to conceal M. le Vicomte, ill as he was, she did not know. So, for Aymar's own sake, Laurent had to tell her, to her bewilderment, that the Bonapartists would not search for him, since they had released him themselves.

The light was failing when, some hours later, he went down the three steps into the low-ceilinged bedroom on the ground floor to take his final resolution; for though he would go unhesitatingly, he still hoped that he would not have to go. But Mme Allard, who was sitting there, shook her head, and Aymar, sunk in the big, billowing farmhouse bed, now seemed very drowsy and confused; his hands were as hot as they had previously been cold, and his breathing sounded quick and shallow. And when Laurent tried to feel his pulse he said dreamily, "You will find that much more convenient, Monsieur, when the bandages are off." . . . No; Aymar must undoubtedly have M. Perrelet's care, and he himself, if necessary, pay the very unpleasant price of obtaining it. He dared not take an articulate farewell of him, lest his intention should be divined. "Good-bye, Aymar," he said within himself, and went sadly from the room.

Then he was furnished by Mme Allard, who had followed him, with an unattractive blue blouse and a sort of rough cape smelling horribly of the farmyard, and an old hat, and directions for his five-mile journey to Arbelles, to be taken, for greater safety, across country. And, looking down at himself, the Comte de Courtomer thought what a pity it was that the only patois with which he could sustain the character which he represented was broad Devonshire.

He regretted this still more when, between ten and eleven, he stood under the smoky oil lamp opposite M. Perrelet's door in the main street of Arbelles village, where every house, including the surgeon's, seemed to be wrapped in the blankest of slumbers. He had had an eventless journey, so far as human kind were concerned, though the darkness had betrayed him pretty deeply into a stagnant ditch between two fields. By carefully avoiding the neighbourhood of the château he appeared very successfully to have avoided any of its garrison; but now a series of modest taps on M. Perrelet's front door--and he dared not attempt a more sonorous summons--had failed to bring any one. If he could not get admitted to have private speech with the doctor his position was rather precarious, for any public parley was highly undesirable. But that must be risked; as must, also, the chance of that discreetly curtained window not being that of M. Perrelet's bedchamber after all.

Laurent withdrew from his pocket a handful of small stones collected en route for just such an emergency, and launched them upwards. They tinkled against the glass and fell back baffled on to the cobbles. Twice he did it. Then the curtains were violently wrenched asunder, and between them appeared a stout white form. In another moment the sash went smartly up.

No miracle-working saint could have been more rapturously greeted by a suppliant than was that nightcapped head by the young man in the street below. But he dared not proclaim his rapture.

"Who is it?" asked the head shortly.

"You are wanted, Monsieur Perrelet," responded Laurent in a cautious tone.

"That's no answer," snapped the surgeon. "I'm always being wanted. But I've got to be wanted to some purpose to-night. Are you from Mme Lambert?"

"No, from Mme Allard. It's a very urgent case," pleaded Laurent. "If you would only come down----"

"Mme Allard! Why, she's fifty, and a widow!" objected M. Perrelet. "Stay, is it that cousin of hers I promised to attend? You are sure it is not a false alarm?

"Oh, no!" replied Laurent earnestly. "It's . . . an old patient of yours. If you will only come down I will explain. He's been having the most horrible shivering fits, and now----"

"_He!_" fairly bellowed M. Perrelet from the window. "He! Why did you not say at once that it was a man? For nothing but a confinement will I stir from this house to-night! Go away, wretched bucolic!" And he started furiously to draw down the window.

Now Laurent was indeed desperate. Having no stave that he might uplift, and fearing to hit M. Perrelet if he threw a stone, he swirled off the cloak that he wore and sent it flying window-wards. A good deal of its unsavoury bulk caught in the descending sash and stayed its progress. The window went up again with even more passion than had propelled its descent.

"What is this filthy object you have thrown up?" demanded M. Perrelet in a fury. "Pah! it stinks! I shall be infected with I know not what!" And he threw the offensive garment down again with all his force at its wearer.

But Laurent, still afraid to pronounce either his or Aymar's name, was now trying a different and more hazardous method of self-revelation. He stepped back across the narrow street and came under the light of the lamp on the other side, where, snatching off his hat, he exposed his features to its rays, M. Perrelet, and any one else whom the altercation might have drawn to their windows. And at the sight of this young man in a blouse, holding his hat rigidly at arm's length and pointing to his own face with the other hand, all M. Perrelet's powers of speech (fortunately) deserted him for the moment. He disappeared from the window without even shutting it, which Laurent took for a hopeful sign. Darting across to the door, he was standing just outside when it opened to reveal the doctor, now clad in a dressing-gown and with a candle in his hand.

He waved the intruder into the nearest room and then said in a resigned manner, "Now, perhaps, you will be good enough to explain, Monsieur de Courtomer, why you are serenading me. I presume you are on parole. It appears to be a masquerade as well . . . pfui! that garment again!" And holding his nose he added, "I will gladly contribute some bergamot to your costume."

"You can't object to it, sir, as much as I do, who have had its company for five miles," protested Laurent. "But let me discharge my errand, and then I will leave you at once, or I may get you into trouble. You obviously don't know that I escaped last night from the château!"

"The deuce you did! Why this curious fancy for Arbelles then, and this flattering midnight visit to my door? Ah, I forgot; you said you wanted me for someone or other."

"I do," said Laurent significantly, "and I'll tell you why!"

Now M. de Courtomer had counted, during his trudge, on making some impression upon M. Perrelet with this recital, if ever he succeeded in penetrating to his presence. Nor was he disappointed; indeed he was satisfied--and even surprised--at the little doctor's language, and, considering what he himself felt on the subject of Colonel Guitton, his standard of requirement was not low. So angry, in fact, was M. Perrelet that he made short work of Laurent's half-reluctant request that, if he did not actually give him up, he should see no more of him. M. Perrelet insisted, on the contrary, on driving him back with him in his gig, into which the young man was now directed to put the mare, while her owner dressed. And very shortly the doctor and the escaped prisoner were driving comfortably away in the darkness.

Once past the château gates unchallenged (for the sentries knew this equipage well) Laurent remarked cheerfully that he should have liked a peep at the dungeon, of whose preparation he had already informed his companion.

"Humph," said M. Perrelet, "you would not have found it at all amusing, and it would probably have meant rheumatism for the rest of your days--no, that's wrong, for I should have had you out of it in a brace of shakes. But you don't seem to realize what a risk you are running for that young man. Not but what," he added, "there's something about him, even at his most difficult, that makes one want to do things for him."

"You once said that you felt something of the sort the first moment you saw him, I think," observed Laurent.

"So I did," assented the old doctor, "and he wasn't looking his best, either . . . lying there senseless on the floor of the hall, half stripped, roughly bandaged, and very extensively bloodstained. Add to that your friend Rigault had thoughtfully thrown a bucket of water over him, in the hopes of bringing him round--young idiot! I said, 'Good God, what's all this?' for every officer in the garrison seemed to be standing round him; and the Colonel replied, 'It's the Royalist leader L'Oiseleur, who has just been brought in shot--dying, if not dead. But I want him saved, if you can possibly do it.' . . . I thought myself at first that it was hopeless . . . cold as ice he was to touch anywhere--and then that damned pool of water. However, I got him wrapped up and had bricks heated, and while I worked at him they told me the story of how he had been found and what he had done--a shocking story, and one which at first I saw no reason to doubt. . . . But somehow, when I had his head on my arm, although as you know I'm no sentimentalist"--Laurent smiled in the darkness--"I found myself thinking, 'I never saw any man who looked less like doing what they say he has done!' . . . Yes, when he decided at last to come back to the world he was quitting, and his chest lifted a trifle, and I said to myself, 'Continue, my young man; you've had the habit of breathing for about five-and-twenty years, I suppose; just take it up again--it's quite easy!' . . . when that happened, I was ridiculously pleased, I admit . . . I little thought I should have it all to do over again within the week!"

They drove on in silence for a while, M. Perrelet having presumably just drained his powers of invective to the bottom over Guitton's latest brutality, and Laurent conscious that he himself could not produce anything new or better.

"Yes," resumed the old surgeon after a few minutes, "I've changed my mind. Perhaps you have converted me. I am convinced now that La Rocheterie is innocent, and that he knows who is guilty, and, though I think he's foolish, I cannot help admiring him for holding his tongue, because I can see what it has cost him.--You know, Monsieur de Courtomer," he added gravely, "there were times when I was a little afraid for his reason, especially when it turned out that his men did shoot him. But he may thank his stars for the activity of that cavalry patrol on the first of May."

"Cavalry patrol? . . . but it was not cavalry that found him, surely," returned Laurent absently; he was thinking of that desperate "I cannot clear myself."

"I know that. I mean the one that captured you, my boy!"

And on that they drove round a turn and straight into a patrol themselves . . . only it was infantry this time.

M. Perrelet acted with singular promptitude.

"Imbeciles! no, I am not to be stopped for any senseless questions! Sacrebleu! you know who I am--Dr. Perrelet from Arbelles, and I am off in a tearing hurry to the farm of La Claviere. What?--this is the boy who fetched me, of course! Let go the mare's head--she'll have me in the ditch! And every moment you delay me----"

A lantern flashed. "It's M. Perrelet all right," said a gruff voice. "Let go!" The surgeon slashed at the mare, who plunged, and the lantern light rocked past Laurent's face without revealing it. They were off again.

Laurent drew a long breath. "Monsieur Perrelet, you ought to be a general! I suppose this _is_ the last place they would expect to find me. But if Guitton discovers----"

"Je m'en fiche de lui," observed the little doctor with great calm. "Now, I wonder if those gentry have been looking for you over at La Baussaine, and worrying that lad of mine--you're both of you nothing but lads to me. Short of that, it is better than anything one could have hoped for, that the place should be searched while you are out of it."

And when they got there, they found that this desirable thing had really come to pass. Laurent was rewarded, therefore, for having run into danger by being preserved from it. No, said Madeleine, they had not troubled much about M. le Vicomte; their business was not, they said, with the red-haired renegade, whatever they meant by that word--and anyhow M. Aymar's hair was not red! She thought that he was rather better the last hour or so; at any rate, he was quite sensible.

Aymar was, indeed, to Laurent's great relief, much more himself; he gave M. Perrelet his most charming smile as he stretched out a hot, dry hand and began to thank him for coming, a proceeding which the latter soon cut short.

"No--and M. de Courtomer doesn't want any thanks, either! Be quiet, young man! Have you got a pain there when you breathe--or there? I thought so. Have you been coughing?--Monsieur de Courtomer, oblige me by going to bed! No; I will not have you here to-night; it is not necessary."

But the moment his back was turned L'Oiseleur beckoned.

"How could you do it, Laurent!" he whispered, seizing his hands. "I should never have consented if I had known. No man ever had a friend like you! . . . But I will not try to thank you; it has gone beyond thanks between you and me now!"

"Go to sleep, mon cher," said Laurent.

"I would, only . . . it's so odd, every now and then I am in the wood again . . . I can count the trees--nine beeches, and the may-tree, and----"

"What!" exclaimed M. Perrelet, turning round "--still there? Be off at once!"

So Laurent threw himself on his bed and slept till nearly sunrise. Then, feeling suddenly wakeful, he thought he would see if M. Perrelet would let him relieve his vigil for a little.

In spite of the prohibition he crept downstairs to Aymar's door. He heard his voice, so he must be awake. He opened the door gently without knocking. Before he had time to get inside, M. Perrelet was on him, and, driving him back into the passage, closed the door behind them both.

"What do you want?" he demanded quite fiercely. "I thought I told you I would not have you here!"

"I'm so sorry----" began Laurent meekly.

"Then don't come again!" snapped the doctor, and he went in as quickly as he had come out.

"And I was going to do him a good turn!" thought Laurent, as half ruefully, half thankfully he went back to bed.

(4)

When he came out of his room at seven o'clock Madeleine informed him, rather to his surprise, that M. Perrelet had gone, M. le Vicomte being much better, and in fact, asleep at the moment. The doctor, however, had said that he would come again in the evening to see how he did.

So evidently this threatened illness had relaxed its grip. Laurent could not be too thankful. He stole into Aymar's room. His friend was better, and, like himself, he was free, and the sun was shining, and there was a bunch of stocks by the bed. . . . Of what use were these things to a man whose face wore, even in sleep, a look of such ineffable sadness? It struck Laurent to the heart, that look. The consolations which he had been adding up in his mind were too facile--even freedom. Yes, perhaps freedom most of all. What was Aymar, when he was well enough, going to do with his freedom, if he could not clear himself? He turned and went out of the room.

To distract himself he then set out in quest of a hiding-place that might have baffled the soldiers last night, and finally selected the roof of a large barn near the house, which was overhung by the branch of a huge walnut tree. No one who was not unusually agile could possibly have gained it by means of that branch, and, for that very reason, searchers were unlikely to imagine that a fugitive had gained it at all. But Laurent, with time heavy on his hands, tried the ascent, and found it feasible, if hazardous.

When, therefore, he sat in the afternoon with Aymar, somewhat languid but evidently much better, it amused him to find the invalid obsessed with the idea that the soldiers would return and make a more thorough search, and that Laurent ought therefore to find himself a refuge beforehand--one, moreover, which should if possible be unknown to Madeleine, so that she could deny the knowledge of his whereabouts. Laurent heard him out, and then told him that the refuge was already secured. "Perhaps I had better not tell you either what it is," he added, laughing, but Aymar insisted upon knowing.

"It sounds a most excellent, breakneck spot," he observed, "but, Laurent, it would be so much better if you did not wait to play the squirrel, but left me to-day. I am well looked after, and nobody will hunt for _me_! I do beseech you not to go on risking your liberty for me! You risked it too desperately yesterday, going back as you did into the very lion's mouth for my sake, since I am sure Guitton would have treated you abominably if he had got you into his hands again."

"Oh, he had made preparations before I left, in the best mediaeval style, for doing that," replied Laurent light-heartedly, and told him what they were. "Imagine to yourself anybody in this century 'languishing in a dungeon'! The very word strikes me as ludicrous!"

"But the fact would not be. And you knew that when you went back yesterday!"

"It made passing the château in M. Perrelet's gig all the more enjoyable."

"Laurent, to please me--don't stay here! Get back to Vendée!"

"But, my dear fellow," protested M. d'Autichamp's aide-de-camp, "I tried to do that once, and came to grief! I shall go by sea when I do go. But it would be foolish to attempt it till the hue and cry for me has died down a little--till the soldiers, for instance, have paid this second visit on which you seem to have set your heart.--Will you bet on it, by the way?"

"Englishman!" retorted Aymar, smiling; and lay silent for a little. Laurent sniffed the stocks by the bed and said, "I wonder when Père Perrelet will let you get up?"

"To-morrow, I hope. He ought to be pleased with me. But I did not see him this morning; he slipped away when I was asleep."

"A lamb this morning, then! He was quite fierce in the night. I came in about three o'clock--at least I tried to come in, but he would not let me. He almost used force to keep me out. You were having a conversation with him, I fancy."

Aymar, who was turning about in the bed, became suddenly rigid, leaning on one elbow.

"I, a conversation with him! . . . I never spoke in the night . . . I was too drowsy. I hardly knew he was there. I . . ."

He broke off, and Laurent was amazed to see a flood of colour mount up from his bare throat to the very roots of his hair. It was gone in a moment, however, and he dropped back on to his pillows and began to speak of some thing else; but Laurent could see that his attention was wandering, and, thinking that he was tiring him, he left him not long afterwards.

It was about six o'clock that he heard the wheels of M. Perrelet's gig and ran out. "He's much better, Doctor!"

M. Perrelet seemed in a great hurry. "I need not have come, then," he muttered as he got down. "Do you mind holding the mare, Monsieur de Courtomer; she's a little fresh." And he went into the farmhouse with hardly a glance at him.

Laurent did as he was desired for a minute or two, then he whistled to Jeannot and made him take his place. He wanted to hear M. Perrelet's jolly voice rallying his patient and saying that he had got him there under false pretences. But instead of that it was very quiet in Aymar's room, and the young man, seeing through the half-open door that the surgeon was listening to his patient's breathing, stayed silently outside.

"Yes, there is no trace of anything," he heard M. Perrelet say, in a voice singularly free from jollity. "You have been extremely lucky . . . I shall not need to come again. Have the wound in your shoulder dressed every third or fourth day for a little; the other dressings can come off now. You may get up the day after to-morrow. If you are going to stay on here for a while I will speak to the good woman about you."

"Have you dismissed M. de Courtomer then?" Laurent heard Aymar reply. "I have not succeeded in doing so."

"No, quite so," answered M. Perrelet in a very peculiar tone. "I am afraid he carries his fidelity too far."

Aymar's hand suddenly gripped the blanket.

"Tell me one thing," he said in a whisper which, nevertheless, Laurent heard well enough. "Was I . . . delirious . . . last night?"

"You had that--misfortune," replied the old surgeon, and stood looking down at him, his little gimlet eyes almost invisible under a frown. Then, as the young man in the bed flung his arm across his own eyes, M. Perrelet abruptly brushed away something--a fly perhaps--below his spectacles, and on that Laurent, very uncomfortable at having eavesdropped, came openly in.

"Ah, Monsieur de Courtomer," said the doctor, "I can leave my patient with every confidence in your hands now, for the time that you are here. He will not need me any more."

And Aymar said, in a strange, suffocated voice, "I have nothing to offer you, Monsieur Perrelet, in exchange for my life, but thanks, which are . . . equally worthless."

"They are good enough," returned M. Perrelet roughly, "for an old fool." And without another word he walked out of the bedroom.

Laurent, puzzled and embarrassed, followed him.

"M. de la Rocheterie is all right," said M. Perrelet in an unenthusiastic voice, his foot on the step of his gig. "There is no more danger of pulmonary trouble, though he has had the nearest escape from congestion of the lungs that I ever came across."

"Was that why he was delirious last night?"

"How do you know he was?"

"I heard you say so just now."

The old surgeon looked sharply at him. "You did not hear what he was saying when you came to the door early this morning, did you?--Not, of course, that it matters," he added hastily.

Laurent stared at him. "No, I didn't catch a word. Why, was he saying anything uncomplimentary about me?"

"No, no!" returned M. Perrelet. "Oh, no, not at all! Besides, delirium is too strong a word; he was only rambling." And he climbed up, but not before Laurent had seen his face relax in obvious relief. "Well, I must be off, Monsieur de Courtomer; I have an appointment. I sincerely trust that you will keep out of Guitton's reach."

He bent down, gripped his late assistant's hand very hard for a second, and, looking fixedly at the glove he was pulling on, said gruffly, "Life is full of disillusionments, young man; never trust it!--But all the same, though I have never regretted being a bachelor, I could have done with a son--if he were like you! . . . Get on, mare!" And the gig passed out of the yard, leaving Laurent thoroughly bewildered. What an extraordinary thing to say to him!

As he got into the farmhouse he heard Aymar's voice calling, an unusual phenomenon. He hurried to his open door. L'Oiseleur was sitting up in bed.

"Ask M. Perrelet to come in here again when he has finished with Madeleine," he said earnestly. "I have something to say to him--something particular."

"Oh, I am sorry!" ejaculated Laurent. "He has just driven off. He did not see Madeleine at all."

Aymar remained an instant motionless. Then he said in a dulled voice, "It's of no consequence," and lay down again, with his face this time to the wall.

He was extremely silent all the rest of the evening, and as by ten o'clock he looked to Laurent much more ill than he had done at that hour in the morning the latter decided to spend the night in his room, in an ancestral and not uncomfortable chair. What could Aymar and M. Perrelet have disagreed about, as they obviously had, and when could the disagreement have taken place? Clearly only during the doctor's first visit--during the night, in fact. Then Aymar had been fibbing to him when he said that no conversation had passed between them. Pausing a moment over this distasteful idea he remembered with relief that, on M. Perrelet's showing, Aymar had been slightly light-headed. His friend need not then have been consciously lying to him. Still, one couldn't quarrel in delirium--the thing was preposterous; and surely no doctor would take offence at anything said in that state! What could M. Perrelet have been thinking about to be so touchy? He had seemed this evening as if he hardly cared what happened to the man he had dragged back from death and been so devoted to--"that lad of mine" as he had called him less than twenty-four hours ago. Laurent began to feel rather annoyed with the old surgeon, and, remembering, too, what he had said about his own "over-fidelity," even angry. What a cruelly unjust thing to hint at to Aymar, who had tried so hard to get his friend to leave him!

Aymar's own voice broke in on his reflections and preparations.

"What are you doing there?" he demanded rather sharply.

"I am going to spend the night in here with you."

Aymar flung round instantly. "No, indeed you are not!" he said with vehemence. "If you do, I don't sleep in this bed!"

"Certainly I will not, then," returned Laurent, somewhat offended. He resumed his coat. "I don't wish to force my society on you to that extent!"

"Laurent," said his friend quickly, beseechingly, "I beg your pardon! I'm . . . I'm in a vile temper to-night. I am better alone, that is all I meant. . . . Forgive me for saying that!"

"My dear fellow!" said Laurent, instantly melted. He came over to the bed. How frightfully strained he looked! "Of course I forgive you! Well, let me shake up your pillows for you. You have something to drink there, haven't you? Promise me, at least, that you will call me if you need anything?"

He gave him his hand to show him that he bore him no rancour for his display of petulance, but he was rather embarrassed when Aymar bowed his head and put his lips to it. Decidedly L'Oiseleur was deeply shaken out of his composure to-night.

It was not until he was himself half undressed that the explanation of everything came on Laurent like a thunderclap--of M. Perrelet's unaccountable demeanour, of Aymar's distress, of his own semi-banishment from his room just now. Last night, in fever, Aymar had let slip his carefully guarded secret--_and knew it_. Moreover, to have sent away M. Perrelet, who was so fond of him, who only yesterday was so whole-heartedly proclaiming his belief in him--to have sent him away, as it had, a changed man, it could be no honourable mystery, after all. It _was_ something disgraceful, something of which, for good reasons, Aymar could not clear himself . . . as he had acknowledged with his own lips.

That was why M. Perrelet had pushed him, Laurent, out of the room last night, why he had asked him this evening if he had overheard anything, and been relieved at his reply. He wanted him, poor fool, to preserve his illusions. . . . Fool, fool, indeed, as Rigault, he knew, had always thought him, and blind beyond belief! And the fact that it had taken him hours to recognize what was now so horribly clear to him--that he had not at once realized the sharp significance of the doctor's profoundly altered attitude towards his cherished patient, seemed to open beneath Laurent's feet further abysses of self-delusion. He had been so secure in this fool's paradise of his. . . . But it was Aymar, Aymar himself who had shattered it--Aymar who had so plainly showed alarm when he told him this morning that he had been talking in the night--Aymar whose demeanour to M. Perrelet also had altered . . . guiltily altered. . . . Aymar who had driven _him_ out of his room for fear of a recurrence of the same thing. . . . Aymar who had in fact betrayed himself!

And with a sensation as though his heart were being slowly cased in ice Laurent de Courtomer sat on the side of the farmhouse bed staring at the dwindling candle, till at last it went out and left him in physical darkness also.

(5)

The coffee in the bowl steamed invitingly, and as long as Madeleine was in the kitchen Laurent made some pretence of eating the bread. The moment that she was gone he took his head between his hands and all but groaned aloud.

A very much curtailed visit to Aymar's room this morning had shown him what a wretchedly bad actor he himself was--almost as bad as M. Perrelet, whose bad acting it had nevertheless taken him, poor dunderhead, such a long time to see through. Aymar, he was sure, must have noticed the constraint in his manner--he who felt that the Aymar he had known and believed in and loved existed no longer--never had existed. It was that thought which made the blackness of his misery.

He took a great gulp of the hot coffee. How was he going to get through the day like this in the company of this unknown person, this _simulacrum_ of L'Oiseleur, this man to whom no decent human being would ever willingly speak again? And even as he fiercely drank down the remainder of the coffee Fate answered his question by showing the unlikelihood of his being required, or indeed able, to spend it in this way at all. For Mme Allard burst abruptly into the kitchen gesticulating--"They are on their way--they will be here immediately! Hide, Monsieur, quickly!"

"What, soldiers?" cried Laurent. "Where?"

"Riding along the road. Jeannot has seen them. Oh, be quick, Monsieur, before they reach the house!"

"I've got a place," quoth Laurent. "Tell M. de la Rocheterie then!" And, suppressing the instinctive desire to rush in to him, he sped out of the farmhouse towards his walnut tree.

He might well congratulate himself on having chosen a refuge beforehand, and also on having already scaled it. Dropping with a thud, he flung himself flat on the thatch between the two sloping dormers of the barn, and almost immediately the foremost soldiers came clattering into the yard below. A moment later Laurent heard orders given to make a cordon round the place and search the outbuildings first, the voice that issued these being undoubtedly that of a _maréchal des logis_. They had then no commissioned officer with them, though, by the sound, they numbered a score or more. More clattering and shouting showed that these orders were being obeyed.

Laurent held his breath. But he knew that there existed no ladder at La Baussaine long enough to reach this roof. He heard the dragoons in the barn below, cursing; he heard them saying that this time they had got to find him, that Arbelles would be too hot to hold them if they did not. . . .

It seemed a long time before they gave up the search outside, and went into the farmhouse. And with the temporary fading of excitement and apprehension the anguish of the night rolled back again over Laurent's soul. He stretched himself out on the warm thatch of his eyrie and buried his face on his arms, and began to suffer even more than he had suffered then, because he was less stunned now, because this morning the agonizing readjustment of ideas had begun in his mind--that readjustment which brought quite logically in its train the conclusion that all the time "they" had been quite right at Arbelles. L'Oiseleur, whom he had so championed, on whose behalf he had gone through a whole gamut of emotions, had done a thing so infamous that, as Colonel Guitton had said, shooting was too good for him. . . . The Imperialist, hateful as he was, was less despicable, after all, than the man he had ill-treated. . . . Laurent writhed at the thought.

The situation could not go on; that was manifest even to his "over-fidelity." He saw now the true meaning of that remark, not so unjust to Aymar after all! What was he going to do, then? Leave La Rocheterie here without seeking to plumb the shameful secret, or tax him with it, and have to witness his avowal . . . or his attempt to lie about it?--No, not that. At least, as he had never attempted to justify himself, he would not lie.

Why not? Why should he be so sure that La Rocheterie would not lie? He asked himself that, and all the reply that came was a picture of a face whose eyes were not those of a liar, nor the firm and sensitive mouth. . . . That mouth had said to him less than four days ago, "Try to go on believing that I am not a traitor!" And here, already----

No, no! He did not believe it! The wave turned upon itself. There must be some other explanation; Aymar could not, could not have done it. Those very words were in themselves a denial. And in that case, if he taxed him with the thing, he broke their friendship for ever. If Aymar were innocent, he could never forgive him.

The sun was so hot now--for time was going on--that Laurent was obliged to clasp his hands together over the back of his neck. But nothing could interrupt his thoughts; they went circling back to their first standpoint. Innocent; with that "haunted" look on him did he seem innocent--had he behaved all along as an innocent man would behave? M. Perrelet's early observations on that point came back to him. Yet Aymar had tried to recall M. Perrelet yesterday evening. He had perhaps some explanation to offer of whatever it was he had said in the night. . . . But why could he not have offered him, Laurent, some explanation during all these weeks of companionship? Aymar had seemed to feel that himself at their parting the other day. If he still was not going to tell him the story he would have to ask him for it--not so much because he believed him guilty, but because he could not endure the strain of ignorance. Aymar _must_ tell him why he "had no one but himself to thank."

By the time that Laurent had come to this resolution fresh sounds from below suddenly warned him that the soldiers were emerging from the farmhouse. He had been so absorbed that he had not realized that it must be nearly two hours since they came. Well, they had not found him, and unless they did so now . . .

An altercation seemed to be taking place about their ill-success. Only scraps of it floated up to him. "We ought to have gone on." . . . "It would not have been any use. Why, the impudent devil was laughing!" . . . "Yes, to begin with . . ." "I could have bet my boots that the cupboard . . ." . . . "What shall you report, _maréchal?_" "Why . . . hunted high and low and could find no . . ." . . . "What about that unmade bed . . . coffee . . . ?" . . . "I did not see them," returned what was probably the non-commissioned officer's voice, and Laurent was sure that he winked.

"They've been questioning Aymar," he thought, amid the sounds of mounting and moving off below. "I suppose the search was amusing, but he must be in better spirits than I am to have laughed at it. . . . At any rate, he has not treated me as he treated his men!"

Then he was horribly, bitingly ashamed of himself.

He was too much obsessed by the thought of what he was going to do to allow a really prudent interval ere he descended his walnut tree, but once on _terra firma_ he approached the house with a lagging step. As he went along the flagged passage to the kitchen he heard a sound of sobbing, and surmised that the troopers had made themselves unpleasant to Mme Allard. However, nothing seemed to matter much--not even that they had failed to find him.

Madeleine _was_ sobbing, searching meanwhile in a press. But when she heard his step she turned round.

"Oh, Monsieur de Courtomer, an awful thing has happened!" She dabbed with her apron at her face, disfigured with crying, and Laurent ejaculated quickly "What? Tell me!"

She gulped a moment, then recovered speech. "After they had searched every hole and corner for you, everywhere you can conceive, and I had told them I had no idea where you were, they began to threaten M. Aymar if he would not tell them . . . they said the most abominable things to him . . . and at last they said that as he was a Chouan they should imitate the Chouans----"

"Imitate the Chouans--what do you mean?" exclaimed Laurent.

"What they used to do in the old days to make people speak," gasped Madeleine.

"Good God!" said the young man, turning pale, for he knew by repute of those past methods.

"--And they turned me out of M. le Vicomte's room where they had been questioning me, too, and when I came into the kitchen here there was one of them holding something in the fire--a ramrod, I think it was. I tried to get it from him and fling it away, but they held me . . ."

But Laurent was no longer there. With a cold sweat breaking out on him he was at the door of the bedroom. His horror had carried him there like a whirlwind--and then he feared to enter because of what he might find. But the first thing he saw was Aymar, raising himself a little in the bed, and saying eagerly, "Are you sure they are gone? For Heaven's sake don't show yourself----"

"They are gone--but if they were not--Aymar, what in God's name have the devils been doing to you . . . and how could you let them . . . it wasn't worth it--my liberty! Let me see! Oh, if I had known! Let me see!" It came pouring out in incoherent distress, and, as L'Oiseleur relapsed on to his pillows again and shut his eyes, he was bending over him half choking: "My God, my God, what have they done?"

"I see Madeleine has been frightening you," said Aymar rather faintly, but with the glimmer of an amused smile. "That was all they did to me, mon ami--tried to frighten me."

And all the time the trickle of blood on his chin from his bitten underlip gave him the lie.

"Don't believe him!" cried Madeleine at the door, a bottle of oil and a bunch of rags in her hand. "They did more than that. . . . If only I had known where you were--I'd have told them fast enough!"

"I wish you had, I wish you had!" groaned Laurent. "For pity's sake tell me . . ."

"It's his arm, Monsieur," said Madeleine. And Laurent, now perceiving that the bedclothes were somewhat suspiciously bestowed, lifted them off and saw.

Only one of the burns was really severe, and that not nearly as bad as it might have been, given such an instrument and so unscrupulous an intention, but the five imprints of the iron between right wrist and elbow were more than enough for Laurent. The even spacing of an inch or two between each gave them an air of deliberation that was sickening. He fell on his knees by the bedside, uncontrollably moved, his English strain all swept away, and put his head down on the hand of that seared and blistered arm with the tears running down his face.

Aymar drew a sharp breath. "My dear Laurent," he said, opening his eyes and smiling at him, "excuse me . . . but your method of treatment . . . I believe oil, and not . . ." Then he fainted.

(6)

A greater peace reigned next afternoon in Madeleine Allard's little plot of garden, where the great pear tree stood sentinel over the stocks and gillyflowers and the old lavender hedge, than any one acquainted with the events of the previous day would have believed possible. In the shade of the pear tree had been placed the ancient chair, and in this, with his swathed right arm extended on its shabby leather, and his legs on another chair, was ensconced L'Oiseleur. Laurent, elbow-propped, lay near him on the grass, and every now and then threw at some prowling hen one of the tiny unripe pears which strewed it.

"You would not do for the artillery, mon cher," observed Aymar lazily, smiling down at him under halfdropped lashes.

"But I am not trying to hit," retorted Laurent, equally lazily.

Abased in spirit to the very dust as he still was, he was also extraordinarily happy. For he had Aymar back, the real Aymar, who, wounded, weak and alone, had five times gone through agony for him--it must have been agony, whatever he said. He shot a swift but almost adoring glance at him now, where he leant his head back against Madeleine's best pillow-case. He was nearly as colourless as the linen, and the circles under his eyes were very deep and dark, but at least he did not seem to be in pain any longer. Yet while Aymar, ill and defenceless, had been undergoing _that_ for his sake, he, in security, had been thinking. . . . The very remembrance almost choked him as he lay there under Aymar's eyes. If he knew . . . if he knew!

Aymar, who had heard the soldiers talking, believed Guitton to be at the back of the disgraceful business. It appeared that he had so bullied the first search-party when he learnt (not, however, for hours afterwards) of L'Oiseleur's presence at the farm that the second hardly dared to face him without the escaped prisoner, whom he correctly assumed to be there also. Indeed, Aymar was of opinion that the Colonel had gone so far as to hint that there was no need to stand on ceremony with _him_. . . . Perhaps that was even why they had been sent without an officer. He asserted that he bore the dragoon no ill-will for proceeding to extremities; they were really desperate--and if their commanding officer had assured them that, since he was beyond the pale, it did not matter what they did to him, could they be blamed for believing him? They had only used the ramrod as a last resource, and unwillingly--or there would not have been such a long prelude of threats first.

But, however much their victim tried to extenuate them, Laurent felt, as he said, that he was not so proud of being a Frenchman as he had been. His disgust and horror suddenly got the better of him again now, and, abruptly smiting the grass, he swore. And then, for the twentieth time, he said, "How _could_ you let them do it! And how I wish I had not told you about that dungeon!"

"My dear fellow, you are making a tempest in a teacup once more," responded Aymar. "And do you suppose that the exact degree of captivity with which you were threatened made any difference? Or"--unconsciously he threw back his head a little against the pillow--"or that if you had been my worst enemy I should have yielded up the secret of your hiding-place to force? Think of that aspect of it, if it is any consolation to you; also of the fact that I got a testimonial out of it. For though they began by remarking that I was not likely to require any violent persuasion----Oh, I'm sorry, I did not mean to tell you that--they ended by saying that I was a stubborn devil, which I took as a high compliment. . . . No, Laurent, in all seriousness, it was child's play to what it might have been."

"Even if that were true," said Laurent, pulling up grass distractedly, "you did not know whether at any moment it might not cease being 'child's play'--nor when it was going to end at all!" And as Aymar said nothing to this, he shot out the query, "Why did it end?"

"Perhaps owing to the intervention of your patron saint," suggested Aymar, smiling. "He had considerable experience of the effects of heat, we are told.--No, I think they were ashamed to go on any longer, and a little frightened at what they had done, insignificant though it was. Moreover, iron does not keep hot for ever, and though they talked of going into the kitchen to reheat it I really think they dared not face Madeleine again. My impression is that she screamed continuously throughout, and that distressed me more than anything, because I was afraid you might hear her, and come in."

"I only wish I had!" sighed Laurent, running his fingers through his hair. "But, Aymar"--he was unable to leave the hated subject--"if the accursed thing was cooling, as you say, how is it that the last burn is so much the worst?"

Aymar looked up at the pear tree. "Because they kept the ramrod on about three times as long, that is why. . . . What is that book you are not reading?"

Laurent raised himself and laid on his knee the little copy of _The Vicar of Wakefield_ which he had inadvertently brought away from Arbelles in his pocket.

"Ah, my old friend," remarked L'Oiseleur, and fell to turning over the pages with one hand.

Laurent returned to his pose on the grass. Yes, Aymar could talk and even jest about yesterday's ordeal; he would never be able to do so about that horrible inquisition at Arbelles, in which he had suffered no actual physical violence.

Presently, indeed, the reader gave an exclamation of amusement. "Laurent, listen to what I have lighted on!" And he read out, in his careful English, "'My friends,' said I, 'this is severe weather in which you are come to take me to a prison; and it is particularly unfortunate at this time as one of my arms has lately been burnt in a terrible manner' . . ."

Laurent could not help smiling. "Really," he remarked appreciatively, "that book is extraordinarily apt. It always seems to hit the situation."

"Yes," agreed Aymar, "for it goes on to say, 'And I want clothes to cover me.'" He glanced at the three or four inches of wrist protruding from the sleeve of M. Arbelles' coat. "But how did this unfortunate divine come by his burnt arm? I have not read it."

"By rescuing his infant children from his house, which burst into flames before his eyes in what I have always considered the most surprising manner. If you'll give me the book I will find the place--it is a few chapters earlier." He reached up, found the page, and read: "'It was now near midnight that I came to knock at my door: all was still and silent--my heart dilated with unutterable happiness, when, to my amazement, I saw the house bursting out into a blaze of fire, and every aperture red with conflagration. I gave a loud convulsive outcry, and fell upon the pavement insensible.'"

"Very surprising, indeed," assented Aymar gravely. "But tell me, why did you say that the book was always so appropriate? I do not remember in our readings any other circumstances of the life of M. Primrose which your ingenuity could apply to either of us."

Laurent bent his head to conceal from him how red he had got. How could he have been such a fool as to let slip that remark? For what had been in his mind faced him now as he turned back from Chapter xxiv to