CHAPTER VI - THE ROAD TO THE BEECH TREE

"Là-haut sur la montagne Il y a un pré; Les perdrix et les cailles Y vont chanter. J'ai pris mon arbalète, J'y suis allé; Croyant en tuer quatre, J'ai tout manqué. C'est le coeur de ma mie Que j'ai blessé . . ."

(1)

The whole unhappy story, the substance of which was told that morning in the cave, began on the radiant April day when Aymar de la Rocheterie rode along the high bank of the river Aven on his way from the conference with du Tremblay and other Royalist chiefs at Saint-Pierre de Plesguen to his own house of Sessignes. He had left his men, some five hundred strong, under M. Nicolas de Fresne, his second-in-command, ensconced, very inconveniently for the Bonapartists, in the Bois des Fauvettes, a spur on the great forest of Armor. And now, well pleased with the scheme for which he and du Tremblay were chiefly responsible, and in which he and his "Eperviers" would presently play a part, he was intending for once to spend a night under his own roof, since by taking this particular route back to his little force he would pass the very gates of the château. And so he could pay his respects to his grandmother, who ruled it for him, and to his cousin, Mme de Villecresne, who dwelt there, neither widow nor wife.

And thus he came, about midday, to the village of Keraven, and found to his surprise that it was full of troops of the line--but Royalist, for they wore the white cockade--and just outside its pleasant inn, the _Abeille d'Or_, encountered their commanding officer, the Chevalier de Saint-Etienne, who was a friend of his. To him he expressed the hope that his officers had not eaten up everything in the hostelry, since he had been intending to get a meal there.

"Plenty to eat," replied M. de Saint-Etienne, as Aymar took the bridle of his horse to lead him off. "And I have a private room . . . at least . . ." he hesitated, "there is someone else in it, but----"

"Avow," said Aymar, laughing, "that the other person is Mme de Saint-Etienne, disguised as your youngest subaltern." For his friend was newly married, and much in love.

"No," said the young soldier seriously, "it is only a middle-aged gentleman of my acquaintance, who stopped here to bait, and who is going to share my meal. Will you not---" He broke off, said rather hurriedly, "I'll see you when you have put up your horse," and vanished--to Aymar's considerable surprise, since he was plainly on the verge of asking him also to share this repast.

Aymar was going back to the inn door when, just in front of one of the open windows, a spur came loose, and, stooping to fasten it, he overheard a man's voice, with an authoritative but kindly ring about it, saying, "So that was L'Oiseleur you were talking to! I have always thought that I should like to make his acquaintance; here is the opportunity. Can you persuade him, do you think, to come in and share an omelette with a dull old country gentleman?"

"That is just what I--" his friend's voice was beginning, when Aymar hastily pulled off his spur altogether and walked out of earshot. By the time he had readjusted it on the doorstep the young Colonel emerged and said, smiling, "'Mme de Saint-Etienne' is anxious to make your acquaintance, La Rocheterie. I am afraid I have already told him who you are--needless to say, I can answer for his discretion and sentiments rather better than for my own."

"Your own discretion, my dear fellow, is as remarkable as if you really had a lady in there!" retorted Aymar, amused, and putting an arm through his. "But who is this veiled stranger?"

"Oh, nobody in particular," said the youthful commander, getting rather red. "But you know how peppery old gentlemen sometimes are if their convenience is not consulted."

Yet it was no "old gentleman" who was sitting at the window of the parlour into which Saint-Etienne now drew his friend, but a man of middle age with a distinguished and intelligent face--M. du Parc, to whom Aymar was duly introduced, and whose conversation, as the three sat at déjeuner together, he soon found anything but dull. M. du Parc might be a country squire, but he had a very pretty, mordant wit tempered by a great deal of natural bonhomie and humour; moreover, L'Oiseleur could not help feeling that he possessed a wide experience of life and of men, though exactly in what capacity he could not be sure. But M. du Parc did not obtrude himself unnecessarily into the talk; he rather listened with a sort of benevolent shrewdness to what the two young Royalists had to say to each other.

Saint-Etienne, it appeared, was much, to his disgust, under orders to remain at Keraven for three days, according to some plan of Sol de Grisolles, the general-in-chief of the Royalist forces in Brittany. "I would not object to waiting," he announced, "if there were only a chance of doing something meanwhile--and indeed I am rather expected to make myself unpleasant, if I can. But I find I am not strong enough to make an attack on the Imperialists over at Saint-Goazec, as I should like to do."

"Under a certain Colonel Richard, are they not?" enquired Aymar. "Is it impossible? How strong are they?"

"Too strong for me, and sure to be well disposed round Saint-Goazec, which is easily defended country. But it is deuced tempting, because I am pretty sure that they do not yet know I am here. But why indulge in these dreams? I could not bring off an attack."

"However, you ought to be able to dispose neatly of any parties that they send out in this direction," observed Aymar. "I drink to your luck in that respect."

"Why leave it to luck, gentlemen?" interposed M. du Parc suddenly. "Put a bit of cheese on the end of a string, and draw it along in front of the mouse's hole, and the mouse will come out . . . especially if he doesn't know that there is a cat in the neighbourhood."

"But we haven't got a bit of cheese, sir," replied Saint-Etienne, laughing rather ruefully, "and, moreover, if the whole mouse came out, this cat alone is not strong enough to deal with him, as I have said."

Aymar had fixed his eyes on M. du Parc. What wisdom and daring there was in that smiling, rather inscrutable visage! He turned them on his friend. "But if you had another cat to help you?"

"Whom do you mean?"

"Myself," replied L'Oiseleur, a gleam in his eyes. "My men are in the Bois des Fauvettes."

"But you could not move them over here rapidly enough, nor without the Imperialists getting wind of it!"

"No," agreed the young Chouan, "but I did not mean that. I meant that if one could only get Richard to march out in that direction, we could both leap on him simultaneously from our respective positions."

"Yes," said his friend, "but to march out in that direction is, I fancy, the last thing he is likely to do."

Aymar propped his chin on his fists. "Then he ought to have some inducement provided to make him march out--as M. du Parc has said, a bit of cheese.--Have you got a map here?"

Studying the two young men bent over it, M. du Parc himself here remarked serenely, "Your little problem, gentlemen, reminds me of an episode in the fighting in '95, when two Royalists of my acquaintance, commanding bodies of volunteers, were in exactly the same situation as you. They solved the problem rather neatly."

"How?" enquired the couple eagerly.

"By making one of the cats the cheese. My friend contrived to let the Blues know that he and his men would be passing a certain point at a certain time, meaning the Republicans in consequence to ambush him there----"

"And what happened?" asked Saint-Etienne.

"The Blues were ambushed themselves by the other party," responded M. du Parc, with a smile, "and the two Royalist bodies together accounted for them completely."

The light in L'Oiseleur's eyes grew, but Saint-Etienne said, "It was a very risky move, though, sir--since it depended, I suppose, upon the most exact cooperation."

"Certainly--but twenty years ago one had to take those risks, so I have been told." To which M. de Saint-Etienne, looking at the older man with a little smile, said, "Yes, those were days of giants."

Meanwhile, Aymar de la Rocheterie, returned to his study of the map, observed thoughtfully, "When I get my supplies of ammunition I shall be moving my men over the Aven. The bridge they call Pont-aux-Rochers, between these wooded heights here--the bridge which I shall in fact cross--would be an excellent spot for an ambush; but that ammunition, I am sorry to say, will not reach me before the end of the week, and I cannot leave the forest until I have it."

"What a pity!" commented Saint-Etienne regretfully. "The bridge is ideally situated for me, since, owing to this road here, I could actually start some hours after the Imperialists and still get there before them. And, as a matter of fact, an ambush would not be essential. Your men and mine together would be able to account for Colonel Richard, if only we could tempt him to come between us."

L'Oiseleur took his head in his hands and thought. The plan appealed to him very strongly. Could he not go back to the forest now and move his men without waiting for the supplies? But the probability was that he would then never receive these at all, and he was pledged to cooperation with du Tremblay in eight or nine days, and would need all the ammunition he could lay hands on. No, the idea must be abandoned. He explained to Saint-Etienne why.

"Besides," M. du Parc reminded them, "an indispensable part of the scheme is that one of you must inform the enemy of your intended movements, or of your ally's movements, if you will. And it is not, in practice, a very easy thing to send information purporting to come treacherously from your side in such a way that the enemy is ready to believe it. The best plan," he added with a fine smile, "is to appear to sell it."

Aymar de la Rocheterie made a movement. "I think I would rather forego a coup than do--or seem to do--a thing like that!"

The smile grew. "Oh, _you_ don't do it, Monsieur de la Rocheterie," explained this astute old country gentleman. "That would be a trifle too suspicious; the enemy might not swallow the bait. One of your men who has a grudge against you 'sells' the information."

They all laughed, and the conversation passed to other matters; indeed, not long afterwards Aymar was again in the saddle, wishing Saint-Etienne, and being wished, good luck. And he rode off, thinking no more of that half-forged scheme for luring out the enemy, save with a moment's regret that it could not be. The same sun shone, he had before his eyes the same face--the only face in the world for him--and nothing warned him that in the _Abeille d'Or_ at Keraven Fate had sat at table with him.

(2)

The road went for a while under larches, absorbed in their enchanted dream of spring; and L'Oiseleur rode beneath their green mist absorbed in his own dream. He was thinking neither of the "Eperviers" nor of the Emperor, but of the meeting full of pain and self-repression and happiness towards which he was riding.

Avoye de la Rocheterie--Avoye de Villecresne as she had been for the last six years--was Aymar's first cousin. Her father had gone to the guillotine with his parents; her mother, widowed at twenty-three, had adopted the little orphaned boy of five, and for two years had given him such care as her broken heart and delicate health could compass. Then she, too, died, and the two children passed into the guardianship of their paternal grandmother, the dowager Vicomtesse de la Rocheterie, and by that redoubtable lady they had been brought up as brother and sister. When Avoye was eighteen Mme de la Rocheterie, who was determined that Aymar should not marry her, brought about for her granddaughter what she considered a suitable match with a fashionable and wealthy man much older than herself, the Comte Frédéric de Villecresne. The inexperienced girl felt no objections to the marriage, was even rather flattered by the attentions of this man of the world, while Aymar, her almost brother, constituted so natural a part of her life that she hardly figured to herself how little he would fill it in the future. As for Aymar himself, the final arrangements were concluded when he was away, and without his knowledge. Moreover, he was still a minor. The marriage took place. Four months later Avoye left her husband and went to live with relatives of her mother's in Paris.

Over this outcome of Mme de la Rocheterie's schemes there took place at Sessignes a combat as fierce as any which the château could have witnessed since its foundation. Aymar, now of age, insisted that his cousin should be invited to make Sessignes once more her home if she wished. She had no other, and she refused to take her husband's money. His grandmother pointed out that M. de Villecresne's house was still open to her; on which the young man asked her whether even in the crusading days of their ancient race any lady of the line had consented to enter a harem. Plain speech was a luxury from which the Vicomtesse never shrank, and she joined battle. It was most undesirable that Avoye should return to live under the same roof as a young unmarried kinsman. Aymar replied that part of her objection was mere hypocrisy, and twofold at that; he knew that while, on the one hand, she cared not a snap of the fingers for other people's opinion, on the other she considered that no breath of scandal dare attach itself to a menage over which she ruled. The rest was an insult to Mme de Villecresne and to himself. Even apart from the fact, of which he professed himself fully aware, that Avoye had no feelings for him other than for a brother, as a Catholic she would never divorce her husband and marry again--for Mme de la Rocheterie, though herself at heart a free-thinker, was far too aristocratic not to have had her grand-children reared in the strict tenets of the Church. And if his grandmother placed so little reliance on his self-control, he would contrive to absent himself a good deal, to travel, as much as his means permitted, to go and fight abroad, perhaps. But Avoye should come back.

And Avoye, not being to her knowledge in love with her cousin, did come back, and in the end made Sessignes once more her home. Aymar carried out his programme; but perhaps it was his very absences from the house which was so full of the memories of their joint childhood which showed her at last her own heart. Yet, however much now in name only, she was still the wife of Frédéric de Villecresne, and as such she knew quite well that her cousin regarded her. She had made the mistake of her life; she must pay for it. But she did not realize how heavily Aymar was paying, too. And no doubt it was only because of the tenacious, self-denying Northern blood which the cousins shared that they were either of them able to stand the strain of a position which made such difficult demands, to go on waiting year after year, to face the prospect of waiting, most likely, for years longer, until death should remove the barrier to their happiness.

At times, indeed, it did seem as if they might not have to wait much longer. Last year, when Aymar had undertaken his self-imposed and repugnant mission to Bath, to interview M. de Villecresne on a money matter connected with his wife, he had found the profligate very much of an invalid. He had recovered, it was true, and returned to France, but he was ill again now--how seriously Aymar was not sure. Avoye would tell him when he got to Sessignes.

He had something to tell her, too--this new plan which he had just made with M. du Tremblay, for (except his love, of which he was very chary in speaking to her) there was little in his life that she did not share. She was, in thought, the comrade of all his hopes and enterprises--had once been a comrade in deed also. But for that he had scolded her.

(3)

The towers of Sessignes came at last into view--Sessignes, Sept-Cygnes, the castle of the Seven Swans emblazoned on the La Rocheterie shield. Little remained now of the feudal stronghold which the first Aymar de la Rocheterie had built in the days of Philip Augustus, yet the château's very position hinted at a warrior's eye. A later and softer generation would have planted it, not on the scarp, but lower down where the pastures sloped to the Aven, loitering here by banks of meadowsweet.

"Madame is well, Monsieur Aymar; but Mme la Comtesse was summoned away about four days ago to M. de Villecresne, who is very ill," said the old, tremulously smiling man-servant in response to his master's enquiries about the family.

Summoned away! She was not here! But the shock of that disappointment was succeeded by the thought, "De Villecresne must be at the point of death; she would never have gone to him else." Aymar's heart beat so fast that for the moment he hardly heard what the old man was saying further. But he mechanically took the letter which he was holding out, and saw that it was addressed in the hand of his second-in-command, M. de Fresne.

"How did this come here, Célestin?" he asked in some surprise.

"One of your _gars_ brought it, Monsieur le Vicomte, this morning, from the Bois des Fauvettes."

"He is still here?"

"No, Monsieur Aymar. He went back at once."

L'Oiseleur tore open the missive all the more hastily that he was expecting nothing from that quarter. It contained a few words to say that as the looked-for ammunition had arrived earlier than was anticipated M. de Fresne was, in accordance with his leader's known intentions, going to move the "Eperviers" over the river at once, leaving their encampment in the Bois des Fauvettes at sunrise on Friday. He should expect in that case to be across the Pont-aux-Rochers by eight in the morning. It did not, he concluded, seem necessary or even prudent (having regard to the reinforcements just received by the Bonapartists at Arbelles) to wait for La Rocheterie's return in person, especially as its exact hour was uncertain; but, knowing that he intended to pass by Sessignes, he was sending this information there, so that his leader should not attempt to go all the way back to the Bois des Fauvettes, but could rejoin his force at some nearer point.

Portions of this brief epistle were in cipher, but Aymar knew his own cipher so well that he could read it off. The result rather annoyed him. To-morrow was Friday; why could not de Fresne wait for his return? . . . He was just going to put the letter in his pocket, when he stopped, and, frugal of gestures though he was, smote his forehead. "Dieu! why had I not this letter at noon at Keraven?" If only he had known then that the ammunition had arrived, and that he could, in consequence, safely move his men across the river, he would certainly have concluded that tempting arrangement with Saint-Etienne. There seemed a sort of grin of Fortune in sending the news now--just too late.

But was it too late? Letter in hand, he sat down under his young father's portrait and thought rapidly. He would have to ride back instantly to the _Abeille d'Or_, arrange with Saint-Etienne, send one of Saint-Etienne's men to warn de Fresne--or better still, go himself--and then somehow despatch information of de Fresne's movements to the Bonapartists at Saint-Goazec.

Yes, but how was he going to do that plausibly? There lay the difficulty as that shrewd old M. du Parc had pointed out. One of Saint-Etienne's men would have to play the supposed traitor. He might pretend, for instance, to have stolen this very letter, and to be desirous of selling it to the enemy . . . as M. du Parc had advised.

Sarrasin, the great wolfhound, stared up at him anxiously as he leant forward, his elbows on his knees. No, it would not do. The Imperialists could not be lured to Pont-aux-Rochers in the time. There would be two cats at the bridge, but no mouse. Because, even if he started this instant to ride back to Keraven he could not get there much before eleven at night, and, allowing an hour to thrash out the matter thoroughly with his friend, and to coach up the supposedly traitorous emissary, the latter could not reach Colonel Richard at Saint-Goazec before six in the morning, which would be too late.

L'Oiseleur got up rather sadly . . . and then stood still. For suppose the letter was sent to the enemy, not from Keraven at all, but directly and now from Sessignes itself, which was so much nearer--though he had small idea to whom to entrust it. It would reach the Imperialist commander this evening, in about two hours, in fact. Meanwhile, he himself would be halfway back to Saint-Etienne, who had ample time in any event to get to Pont-aux-Rochers before the enemy.

And by this plan Aymar was really tempted. It had just that spice of daring which appealed to him, and he began to walk up and down the hall considering it. But in a moment he saw that it would be difficult to make such a sending plausible--doubly, trebly so as in this case the letter _must_ come directly from himself. And it was exactly that coming from himself which his keen sense of personal honour could not stomach. He had an innate aversion to even the semblance of treachery--to even the appearance of such a horrible thing as the betrayal of his own men.

He thrust de Fresne's letter resolutely into his pocket and went to find his grandmother. Had Avoye gone to her husband because release was near?

The silver swans of La Rocheterie, with the golden crowns round their necks, sailed without progress on the azure of the shield above his grandmother's head, where she sat by the hearth in the salon, slim and upright, a book on her knee. She had been a very pretty girl--and not, it really seemed, so long ago.

She exclaimed with surprise and pleasure as her grandson appeared at the door, since, though she had sometimes a very captious method of showing--or cloaking--her affection for him, and often took a malicious joy in combating him; at bottom she adored him--fiercely. For the victory which, at one-and-twenty, his will had won over hers in the matter of his cousin, she bore him no grudge. The grudge was against Avoye, who had "spoilt his life," keeping him, the last of his line, unmarried, when (especially since the Moulin Brûlé and the rest had added a romantic prestige to his personal attractions and the fact of his ancient lineage) he might, she felt, have carried off any heiress in France.

"So you have left your beloved Eperviers to see an old woman!" she said, as he kissed her unwrinkled and still delicately coloured cheek. "But more probably it was to see a young one. . . . She is away, though--as you have doubtless ascertained already."

"Célestin told me," replied Aymar, a trifle stonily. "He also told me where she had gone."

Mme de la Rocheterie looked at him, and then dropped her expressive eyes. "But, since he did not know it himself, he could not calm your agitation by telling you that I expect her back to-night. I almost thought she would have been here by now."

A flush rose in Aymar's cheek. Conscious of it, he turned away and rested his spurred foot on the hearthstone, his hand above him on the mantel. "And . . . de Villecresne?" he asked after a moment.

Mme de la Rocheterie breathed a decorous sigh. "Poor Avoye, poor child! She writes sad news."

"What, is he better?" exclaimed the young man.

"Aymar, think what you are saying!" But her mouth twitched with appreciation. "On the contrary, she was too late. The Comte de Villecresne died about three hours before she got there."

L'Oiseleur drew a sharp breath, and, putting his other hand on the high mantel, bowed his head between his arms. His face was quite invisible, but there was no superfluity of colour in it now. After a moment's complete silence he gave a sound which might or might not have been a laugh.

"What did you say?" demanded Mme de la Rocheterie.

"I? Nothing," he responded, without moving. "But what I should like to say is, For whom in the world is the news of de Villecresne's death bad news?"

"Possibly for his creditors," said his grandmother drily. "I suppose that you have some idea of their number, since your visit to him. . . . We sup in a quarter of an hour, Aymar."

No meal in his life had seemed so interminable to the young man as that of which he partook that evening with the old woman who had brought him up, whose jealous, half-tormenting affection was perfectly aware that his whole soul was full of the news she had just given him, the news he had waited years to hear, and that his ears were straining all the time for the sound of wheels . . . and who would not so much as glance at the subject of Avoye's release, nor make even the slightest further reference to her return.

But she talked of politics--and he had to attend and reply: of the coming struggle in the west--and he had to give his opinion of the small movements which had already taken place; of the shock given to the countryside by the Bonapartists' summary execution of a woman spy, a peasant, a few days ago. "A foolish shock," was Mme de la Rocheterie's comment. "Marie Lasserre knew what she was risking. And I do not approve, in any case, of women aping men and usurping their roles. If they do, they should at least be prepared to pay the same penalty."

No doubt she was hoping to get up an argument on the subject of Avoye's exploit at Chalais, which had been so much talked about since the Restoration. But Aymar did not accept the challenge. And, having endured various thrusts at his want of appetite (which he hoped he had disguised) he was able at last to escape from the table and the candles and the necessity of answering coherently, to the place where a lover should carry his rapture--under the open sky and the stars. And he went across the grass of the rose-garden where, late as it was, a peacock was parading, past the sundial and into the orchard, and leant against a tree there. Truly his happiness was almost more than he could bear. And he had waited so long for it--it seemed a lifetime. It _was_ his lifetime. . . .

(4)

He raised his head at last. Through the apple-boughs the stars peered, laughing, and there was, as there should be, the fairy boat of the young moon low in the west. It was indeed a night for her to come to him, as any moment now she might come. She, too, should look at the stars between the lattice-roof of blossoms--blossom and star herself.

Nothing between them any more! that evil shadow which had made a mockery of her life gone for ever! Aymar could scarcely believe it yet, but his heart so ached with the almost intolerable joy of the thought that the strange, sweet pain seemed to seal it as true. He reached up to the tree under which he stood, and broke off a little bough with its pink-flushed blossoms, pale now in the starlight. The branch was tough; he had to tug at it, and as he tugged he felt something give round his left arm. He knew what it was--that absurd talisman of his.

He put the apple blossom to his face and kissed it, as he would kiss Avoye when he gave it to her. Perhaps these moments . . . and still more, those that were coming . . . were worth, after all, their heavy toll of endurance and restraint, the meetings that were only pain, the partings whose full sorrow might not be tasted, the enforced absences, the perpetual struggle to be content with a little for fear of losing all. But struggle was over now, and he could lay at her feet a heart as clean as his sword.

The peacock's jarring note roused him, and he remembered that the _jartier_ was broken on his arm. Avoye should weave him a new one--but not to-night. Early in the morning he would get rushes from the river, and before he rode away she should plait him another bracelet and fasten it on . . . if indeed it were necessary to continue this farce nowadays. He never had to show that he carried on his person the earnest of his good fortune and his prestige. But he must not let the broken charm be found; and, putting down the apple blossom, he shook the twist of rushes down his sleeve and drew it out. Strange that it had broken like that, when it had survived much more strenuous doings!

He was fingering it when he became aware of galloping hoofs in the distance. His heart galloped, too--Avoye at last! No--it was a single horse, a saddle horse; and it was coming along the little-used bridle-path that led by the river and almost passed the orchard where he was. Who on earth could it be? He went across the orchard and vaulted the gate, and saw that the horseman, riding as a tired and heavy man rides, had abandoned the path, and was making for the same point. He must be coming to the château--must know the way well, too . . .

"Who is it?" Aymar called out.

"Is that you, La Rocheterie?" returned a voice full of relief. "Thank God, thank God! I did not know you were at Sessignes. I have brought the most terrible news!--Wait a moment."

He climbed stiffly out of the saddle. It was the Marquis de Vaubernier, a neighbour and old friend of the family--Avoye's godfather, in fact. He now came up to the young man, wrenched out of his ecstasy of a moment ago into what he imagined to be tidings of some military mishap, and said, "Your cousin Avoye is in the hands of the Bonapartists at Saint-Goazec, and--Oh, my God, I can hardly believe it yet--they intend to shoot her to-morrow morning!"

"Nonsense!" said Aymar sharply . . . but the world went black. "Impossible!" he repeated after a moment. "Marquis, you are dreaming! What, in Heaven's name, should they do that for?"

"Because you allowed her to obtain that information for you," retorted the old man, tears in his voice. "Because they suspect her--unjustly this time. They have her in custody at the _Cheval Blanc_ just outside Saint-Goazec. And they will do it--I have seen their colonel. Have you not heard about Marie Lasserre?"

Aymar stood in the starlight as if he had been shot himself, so still that the old Marquis, wringing his hands, exclaimed, "Good God, man, can't you speak! There's no time to wool-gather! And find me some place to sit down--I'm dead with fatigue!"

"If what you tell me is true," said Aymar in a very quiet voice, "I will go and give myself up in her place, of course. But I must know a little more first." He opened the orchard gate. "Come up to the seat in the rose-garden. I will not take you into the house. There is no need to tell my grandmother."

And in the rose-garden, sitting on a stone bench, to the accompaniment of the discordant cries of the peacock, incoherently but convincingly the Marquis de Vaubernier told his tale.

He had been out riding when he heard that a lady travelling with her maid had been detained by the Imperialist troops near Saint-Goazec; the replies to his queries convinced him that the lady in question was Mme de Villecresne, of whose recent journey he was aware; and, becoming very uneasy, because, as he confessed, he could not help wondering if they knew of her former "exploit" at Chalais, he went to the _Cheval Blanc_, where she was detained, and succeeded in seeing the senior officer there. The Bonapartist's curtness and obvious unwillingness to speak of the matter alarmed the nervous old man still more, and when the officer began, in his turn, to question him about the lady, his chief desire was to get away, lest, as he said now, "I should let slip something indiscreet about her.

"And then, La Rocheterie, just as I was going to mount, a young officer who had been in the room came up to me and said, very gravely, 'It does not matter what questions you answer or do not answer, Monsieur, about that unfortunate lady--nothing can make any difference now.' When I asked him what, in Heaven's name, he meant, he said in a very low voice, looking, as I could see, as if he could hardly bring himself to tell me, 'Her fate is fixed; she cannot be allowed to go free. _We know too much about her_.' And when, God help me, I still did not take in the full horror of what he was saying to me, he whispered, 'Another Marie Lasserre!'

"Then, Aymar, I did understand, and I frantically caught his arm, and said I would go back instantly and see their commander again. The young man said, 'Useless! We, his officers, have all remonstrated. Yet we have not quite given up hope, though one must say that, but for a miracle, she will be shot to-morrow morning. A spy is a spy, even though she be of noble birth.' Then, hardly knowing what I did, I said I must see _her_ at once; but he declared that it was out of the question, and that he himself would be cashiered if it was known that he had even told me about it; that all I could do now for her was to go home and pray. . . . So I did not see the child--I came straight here, riding as I have not ridden for twenty years. And at least _you_ are here. . . ."

Aymar had stood rigid before him, his hands gripping each other behind his back. Now he said thickly, "Marquis, it must be a mistake."

"Whose mistake?" asked the old man. "Not mine! I wish it were! I tell you the colonel's manner was most sinister, and when that young officer held my stirrup for me I saw the tears in his eyes."

"But perhaps it is not Avoye at all?"

"They spoke of her by name. Besides, I saw her carriage in the yard--one of yours."

"But--but it is an incredible thing to do!" said Aymar, as one speaking in a nightmare.

"That is what everybody said about Marie Lasserre . . . but they did it. . . . Oh, Avoye, my little Avoye!" He began to break down. L'Oiseleur walked away to the sundial.

When, after a few moments, the old man followed him there, Aymar was slowly tracing out the figures on its metal plate, cold with dew. "What are you doing, La Rocheterie?" he exclaimed, seizing him by the shoulder. "It is your fault that she is in danger!--There's no time to lose. . . . Think of something, for pity's sake!"

"For pity's sake, be quiet then!" flashed out the young man. "Cannot you see that I am trying to think of some way? Do you suppose that I do not want to save her a thousand times more than you do--that I would not give every drop of blood in my body to spare her a pinprick--that I would not get on your horse this instant and ride to Saint-Goazec and give myself up . . . if I could!"

The passion in his voice silenced the Marquis de Vaubernier, and he went off to the other side of the lawn. And Avoye's lover, his elbows on the sundial, his clenched fists pressed to his head, was fighting hard against the almost overwhelming impulse to do what he had said--fighting because it did not seem to him consistent with his honour and his obligations. Was he not bound to du Tremblay by their joint scheme (more his, indeed, in conception than the other's), did he not know that his own men were useless for any enterprise requiring foresight without his leadership--that de Fresne knew nothing of the fresh arrangements, and that without seeing him it would be very difficult to ensure his grasping his part in them? No, if he surrendered himself to this Colonel Richard, as he longed to do, though for him it would only mean prison and inactivity (for of shooting him there could be no question) he was making the enemy a present not only of himself, but of his small yet valuable force as well, stultifying his comrade's plans--in short, deserting his post. And yet it would have been so sure, so easy; to have him, L'Oiseleur, in their hands, they would certainly open the door of the cage to any woman, were she ten times a spy.

But if honour forbade him to surrender himself, what could he do instead? Try to rescue her? Almost impossible, single-handed. None of the servants would be of any use. If he had Eveno, or a couple of his best men . . . but even the Chouan who had brought de Fresne's letter had gone back. . . .

The blood leapt to Aymar's face. Why, he had the way to save Avoye in his very hands after all! He had only to utilize the scheme almost completed that noon with Saint-Etienne--almost entered upon on his own initiative when he found de Fresne's news. He had only to strike a bargain before the information--the letter--was given up; and the very fact that he had now a bargain to strike lent infinitely more colour to the genuineness of the whole affair. In fact, Avoye's danger gave him the pretext which had been wanting. He might not only save her, but snatch also the military success which had so tempted him. Had he not already contemplated the sending of that letter with nothing but that success to gain by it? And, since Saint-Etienne and his regiment were so much nearer Pont-aux-Rochers than the Bonapartists were, there was no more risk than before: if he sent the letter at once, from Sessignes, he still had ample time to ride back to the _Abeille d'Or_ and complete the arrangements.

He snatched his subordinate's letter out of his pocket. Vaubernier, of course, must take it; he could not. The striking of the bargain--no easy task--must be entrusted to that agitated old gentleman; but again there was no help for it. His very agitation ought at least to convince the Imperialist commander of the genuineness of the motive behind the sending of the information. And though the scheme was less sure than the one he longed to adopt--that of paying for his love's freedom with his own--yet, if this Colonel Richard should suspect the existence of a trap somewhere, so long as he was ignorant of Saint-Etienne's presence at Keraven he could not possibly know in what the trap consisted. And surely the chance--however much he recognized it to be merely a chance--of crushing a very obnoxious enemy was worth more than the gratification of shooting a woman.

With the letter in his hand L'Oiseleur looked across the dim garden at Vaubernier, considering what instructions he should give him in order to convince Colonel Richard. And then it slid into his mind, more than a little dizzied by the violent transition from rapture to horror, that he was going deliberately to commit the very act on account of which he had a few hours earlier rejected an alluring scheme. He was sending the letter himself. In other words, he was about to sell information--and information about his own men--in order to save a kinswoman's life. . . . At least, that was how his action would appear to Colonel Richard--how he must pray indeed that it would appear. . . .

The spring night seemed suddenly very cold. Was he really going to lay at an enemy's feet the most precious thing he had--his untarnished honour? For Avoye's sake, yes . . . till the day came. When the Imperialists fell into the joint trap prepared for them he would be abundantly cleared.

He went over the lawn.

"Monsieur de Vaubernier, do you mind what figure you cut in this business--not but what I am reserving the least reputable for myself?"

"With Avoye's life at stake!" said the Marquis tremulously. "No, you can make of me what you will."

Aymar looked hard at him. Obviously it would really be more convincing that Vaubernier should pretend to have stolen the letter from him, or something of the kind, and should affect to be the person really responsible. . . . No, in spite of his willingness, he could not let him brand himself as a traitor--an old man like that--for the ensuing military coup would hardly clear him, who had no part in it, as it would L'Oiseleur.

"I only want you to be an intermediary," he said firmly. "I propose, Marquis, that you shall strike a bargain with Colonel Richard for my cousin's safety with this letter, which contains important information about the movements of my force to-morrow. It is a letter which I have only just received from my second-in-command. You must assure Colonel Richard that it is genuine, that you have had it straight from me . . . and if he wishes to know how I could bring myself to do such a thing, you must lay stress on the fact that Mme de Villecresne is my cousin. You must not give him the letter till he promises to let Avoye go; it would be better if you could contrive not to interview him with it on you. . . . But I do not ask you to take any responsibility; all that rests on me. You are merely a go-between."

"I understand," said the old gentleman. "And I understand, also, of course, that you intend----"

"You had better understand nothing of the kind," put in Aymar quickly. "Colonel Richard will question you; you must know nothing --_nothing_--but that I am horribly concerned for Mme de Villecresne's safety--which God knows is true enough!--and you will be prepared to swear that the information is genuine, for I have told you so, on the word of a gentleman."

And, even as he said it, he wondered how much faith Colonel Richard, when he got that letter, would put in the word of a man who could send it.

"Perhaps you had better not know, even, what is in it," he went on, looking down at it. "Indeed, unless one strikes a light, you cannot see. I think that I will seal it up. I can get into the house without being seen."

He went through the open window of the dining-room and lit a candle on the writing-table there. But first he read the letter through again, and realized that place and time, and a little besides, were unintelligible, because they were in cipher. If the letter was to be of any use as a bribe, he must with his own hand decipher these passages. And Aymar hesitated, penetrated through and through with the horrible apparent significance of what he was doing. But it _was_ only apparent; it _was_ only a ruse. And, if he could help it, Avoye should never know the means he was employing to save her; no more than he himself would she like the sound of it. Vaubernier must, if possible, make it a part of the bargain that she should not be told the reason for her release; he must not even see her in person lest she should guess some connection with him, Aymar. And almost more than from Avoye must what he had done for Avoye be kept from his grandmother, who considered already, as he knew, that his cousin had spoilt his life. It was for that reason, not to spare Mme de la Rocheterie's sensibilities, that he hoped even Avoye's danger might not reach her ears. It was just conceivable that Avoye herself, on her return, might keep it from her. If she did not return. . . . But that was unthinkable!

Unthinkable or no, that nightmare thought had him in its grip as he hastily wrote in the words above the cipher. Then he sealed up the letter again with his own seal, and went back into the garden to deliver it to his messenger.

"_Sans tache_," he said to himself as he went. "Oh, Avoye, my darling!"

"Ah, here you are at last!" said his grandmother, laying down her book. "I was just thinking how delightful it must be to be young and not to dread the dew. But I fear that we shall not welcome Avoye to-night now."

"No, I do not think that she will come to-night," answered Aymar without looking at her. "And, if she does I shall not see her, for I must rejoin my men without a moment's delay. I have come to take leave of you, Grand'mère; Hirondelle is at the door."

"What!" exclaimed Mme de la Rocheterie. "Is there anything wrong?" But she saw in an instant that there was; at least, that he was holding down some very strong emotion. And he was in uniform again.

"I hope not. Not if I go back at once. Good-bye, Grand'mère." He took her hand and lifted it to his cold lips.

"But, Aymar," she said, roused to real concern, "you have been in the saddle all day--you ate no supper. You cannot ride straight back to the Bois des Fauvettes--you will kill yourself!"

"I trust not to go as far as that!" he answered. "When--when Avoye comes, tell her I had to go."

"That is a pity," said the old lady, suddenly moved with sympathy; he looked so horribly pale and drawn. "I hope, mon fils, that your bad news is unfounded?"

"I hope so, too," said Aymar, and was gone from the room.

And when his grandmother, her book on her knee, heard Sarrasin's dismal howling in the hall, she knew that he was gone from Sessignes altogether.

(5)

The April night, its scents and caressing breeze, meant little enough now to Aymar de la Rocheterie as Hirondelle carried him away at a smart pace from Sessignes--and farther from Avoye, too. That was the hardest thing of all, to ride off and leave his love's fate in the not very capable hands of the Marquis de Vaubernier--so hard that when the young man had gone a quarter of a mile along the road to Keraven, he suddenly reined up the bay mare and turned her half round. But no--it was done now; nothing, not even an appeal from Avoye herself, could make it other than infamous to go back. He had given the lives of his men into Colonel Richard's hands until such time as he himself completed his arrangements with Saint-Etienne. L'Oiseleur set his teeth and pushed the mare forward.

Waves of agonizing fear for Avoye broke over him every now and then; and if they ebbed, it was only to be succeeded by a cold tide of distaste at what he had done. Oh, if only he could have offered himself in exchange, instead of engaging on this tortuous and insecure path of outwitting the enemy! But to give himself up would not be honourable; it would not really be the _beau geste_ of which it might perhaps wear the semblance . . . even as what he had done instead was not really vile, as it appeared. Yet he _had_ branded his own stainless name, though it were but for a few hours. What if the blot did not wash off so easily as he had told himself? A ruse . . . yes, but one with a bargain involved. . . . Moreover, he was undoubtedly trying to trick the Imperialists into giving him something for nothing. It galled Aymar's fastidiousness, that idea. But surely Colonel Richard, a soldier himself, would recognize the proceeding as a move in a game. Aymar had not guaranteed that the "Eperviers" would be waiting at Pont-aux-Rochers for the Bonapartists to snap up; he had only guaranteed that that was what was planned. It was a contest as to which could outwit the other. If only so much did not depend on how Vaubernier conducted the negotiations!

To ride fast was a relief, yet it surprised Aymar to find how quickly he had covered half the distance back to Keraven. It was not yet one o'clock in the morning. All the better. He had met the river again, left it, and was going in the shadow of a wood when he heard a distant shot. And, as he pulled up to listen, the thought struck him for the first time, Suppose I fell into an enemy patrol and was captured--what of de Fresne at Pont-aux-Rochers then?

The idea turned him cold. How could he have been such a fool as to think that there was no risk about this business? Till he was actually at Keraven the whole scheme, all his men's lives, rested on his shoulders alone. Nervousness about his own personal safety was a feeling which Aymar de la Rocheterie had never tasted in his life; but he tasted it thenceforward all the way to Keraven, and it had not a pleasant savour.

The spire of the village church at last, standing up in the light of dawn. He was here, unmolested, and drew his breath more freely. Then he opened his cloak as he rode, to show his uniform for the benefit of Saint-Etienne's sentries.

But there were no sentries in Keraven.

So soundly did the village sleep that not a window was raised as Hirondelle's hoofs clattered on the cobbles of the _place_. And for centuries her rider sat her there, under the church tower, motionless and asleep himself--was he not?--in some cold and evil dream. Then the clock above him struck the hour of three, and he knew that he had not the fortune to be dreaming. Saint-Etienne's force, on which his whole plan turned, and which was to have been at Keraven till Sunday, had gone.

A few minutes later, bending from the saddle, L'Oiseleur was hammering frantically on the door of the _Abeille d'Or_. A nightcapped head--the host's--came forth from a window. "How long has M. de Saint-Etienne's regiment been gone?"

"They left about four o'clock yesterday afternoon, Monsieur; a despatch came ordering them off to Allonnes without delay. I will come down and open the door, Monsieur de la Rocheterie."

Allonnes! It was hopeless to contemplate their cooperation at that distance. They had been gone eleven hours--ordered off not long after his own departure yesterday. And Saint-Etienne had seemed so certain of remaining! Still a little stunned, Aymar watched Hirondelle trying to eat the honeysuckle on the trellis, and thought of the words used in this place only yesterday about the cats and the mouse. Who was going to be the mouse now?

He pulled himself together. Though there could be no triumphant coup for him, there need be no disaster. Having allowed plenty of time for Saint-Etienne's infantry to get to Pont-aux-Rochers before Colonel Richard could possibly reach it, he naturally had ample time to ride beyond it himself.

"Get me a glass of wine and a crust," he said hurriedly as the host emerged half dressed, "and tell me, have you that English horse of yours? I want him saddled at once, then--no, I'll do it myself while you fetch me the wine. I shall do better to have a fresh horse, for I must ride like the devil now to the cross-roads on the other side of Pont-aux-Rochers."

"Pont-aux-Rochers?" said the innkeeper. "Then you will be better advised, Monsieur le Vicomte, to make a detour by Plélan and cross at the ford, for the Blues' patrols may very well be out in strength on the other road. I am not sure of it, but there were rumours last night."

Aymar remembered the shot in the night. He could not afford to meet any patrols. "I will go round by Plélan then--but even so I can do it," he added to himself. "Quick, the stable key!"

Yes, he could easily do it, even by the longer route. He kept assuring himself of that over and over again, as the English horse carried him down the way by the ravine at a pace little short of dangerous.

Who could have foreseen this horrible trick of Fate? Or had he been incredibly rash in staking so much on Saint-Etienne's continued presence at Keraven? Surely not, since Saint-Etienne had his orders to remain there for three days, and on that assumption they had all but completed their joint plan against the Imperialists. And, good God, even had he known that there was a possibility of the regiment's being ordered off, could he have done otherwise? Could he have left Avoye to perish, even if this scheme were hazardous?

But it was not of Avoye now that he was thinking as he galloped on under the imminent sunrise. Despite the knowledge that, with a horse like this beneath him, he could get across the river and intercept de Fresne well before the latter reached Pont-aux-Rochers, his mind was obsessed with horrible little vignettes of what would happen if by any ultimate chance he failed to do it. He tried to shut them from his mental vision, encouraging his horse, but husbanding him as a good rider can, for almost everything depended on his staying power--himself unconscious of fatigue, though he had been in the saddle, without much intermission, since ten o'clock yesterday morning.

By five o'clock he was on the Lande of Languédias, a desolate heathy patch of country, riding very hard under clouds and wind. For time, it seemed to him, was going even faster than he--or perhaps it was only that the nervous strain was beginning to tell on him. And his thoughts went faster than either. He wondered what Avoye were doing if . . . O God, not if! . . . she were alive. Yes, she _was_ alive . . . free . . . he was sure of it. . . . Rather, what were they saying of him, Colonel Richard and his officers, as they marched to lie in wait at Pont-aux-Rochers, unaware that he was racing them by the other road--racing to stop what he himself had set in motion?

Racing, yes! Why had he listened to rumours about patrols and gone round--why had he been prudent against his own inclination? And he would have done better in the end, perhaps, to have kept Hirondelle, though she was not fresh. Yet this horse was going gallantly enough, though the pace was beginning to distress him; there was foam on his nostrils, and he was sweating more than he should. But de Fresne would probably be rather after than before his time; he would not leave the Bois des Fauvettes before sunrise, and there was always delay about getting the men on the move. . . . It _could_ not be that he should arrive too late; he had only about eight miles to the ford now, and three beyond, and he could still get that much out of the innkeeper's horse--at the cost perhaps of cruelty. He had not yet used the spur at all; he was keeping that for the end. . . . And what if at the end he found that the Imperialists were not at Pont-aux-Rochers at all, and his men in no danger? In that case Avoye . . . but his mind, shuddering, refused the alternative. No, his men _were_ in danger . . . but only, please God, in such danger as he could avert.

Aymar never was to spur the English horse. It was not more than four or five minutes after this that it put its foot in a rabbit hole and came crashing down. Its rider had just time to know what had happened, then a curtain was drawn over everything.

Later, he gripped the heather and pulled himself to an elbow, sick and giddy. He had been flung clear. But a glance showed him that his horse's neck was broken. He sank back again; the fall had been so violent that probably only the springy heather in which he lay had saved him from broken limbs himself. For a moment or two he was not sure that it _had_ saved him. But he sat up again, his throbbing head in his hands. His horse was dead; if not behind time already he had little to spare; he had just lost . . . how much? and, worst of all, there were no dwellings on the Lande, or at best only a miserable cottage where it would be out of the question to procure a horse. But somewhere, somehow, he _must_ procure one! L'Oiseleur staggered to his feet, and, after standing a moment to steady himself and take his bearings, started to run stumblingly through the tangled heather towards a thread of smoke just visible about two miles away.

"A horse!" mumbled the old man. "No, my young gentleman, no horses here! A goat or two. Horses!" He emitted a high cracked sound of mirth. "Not if you were the King of France himself!"

A bundle of rags on the other side of the hearth disclosed itself in the dim and smoky light to be a human being. "Maturin over at the quarry-pit has a horse," it said, in the voice of a woman. "He uses it for drawing up the stones--a strong beast it is."

"Where is the quarry?" exclaimed Aymar. "Quick, it's life or death."

They told him, slowly. They were not sure of the distance--two miles, four miles? . . . He tossed them a piece of gold and ran out of the hut.

How long had he been in finding this place--out of his road as it was? He only knew that he had nearly missed it altogether. And now the quarryman was very unwilling to surrender his stocky grey steed--slow enough, as one could see, but still . . . a horse.

"I can't spare him, Monsieur, and he is not used to being ridden, and I have no saddle."

"That's not of the least consequence. Take off those traces quickly! I will give you twenty-five napoleons for him--about twice what he is worth--and if possible I will return him to you and not reclaim the money. If that does not content you, I shall take him whether you will or no."

The quarryman did not look content, but this pale, stern young officer frightened him, though he made no motion to use his arms. So he stood sulkily aside, while Aymar got on to the grey's back; only, as he rode off, he shouted _Thief!_ after him, and threw a few stones before he sat down to recount the money.

Of all tortures, to ride a slow horse when the very heaven and earth depended on its speed! Once or twice Aymar thought of abandoning it and taking to his own legs again, but by spurring the grey without mercy he did get out of it a certain measure of progress. And there was his own bodily fatigue, which he could no longer disregard, to reckon with also. Oh, for half an hour of Hirondelle! But even Hirondelle could not get him there in time now.

The ford over the Aven at last! All that shining water had come down from Pont-aux-Rochers! What had it seen there?

The grey did not like it; he refused to enter. Twice Aymar lashed and spurred him; then, desperate, he jumped off, and, in water himself to mid-thigh, tugged him over. It had meant fresh delay, but nothing short of a miracle could save the Eperviers now. Ironically, the quarryman's horse went better after the contest. But all the last three miles his rider's mind seemed to revolve round one word. Nothing but a miracle . . . a miracle. . . . O God, send a miracle!

At the cross-roads, not a sign. Had they passed or no? A little way off in a field, a girl was herding goats. He called to her.

"Yes, Monsieur, some Chouans--a great many--went by about an hour ago. There has been firing since. They went along there--towards the bridge."

Without a word Aymar set spurs to his horse. There had been no miracle. But at least he might be in time to die with them.

Even that was denied him. A mile or so farther along the road turned sharply to the left; and here, where it was wide and tree-shadowed, and had a spacious grassy margin on one side, he saw the first fugitives of all. There were perhaps a dozen; they ran past him in twos and threes, panic-pursued. Not one had a visible wound. They had just run . . . his men.

He did not try to stay them, for even in that hasty passing he had seen that they were his newer, his least reliable recruits. Then he came on one fallen by the roadside, with another bending over him. For an instant he pulled up.

"What has happened at the bridge?" he asked, but his voice stuck in his throat, for he knew.

"It was a cursed trap!" answered the man, panting. He did not look up. "The Blues . . . ambushed there . . . they have made mincemeat of us. . . . See, Yannik, if I tie this round your leg you could get on farther."

"O God!" said L'Oiseleur, and rode on--rode on blindly to see more men running under the trees on either side, to hear himself at last called by name, to find himself then in the midst of a small body retreating with some semblance of order, and, clutching his bridle convulsively and looking up at him with wild eyes, his youngest officer, Clément de Soulanges, a boy of twenty--to hear him crying out of the clamour, "La Rocheterie, La Rocheterie, why were you not with us? It was awful . . . I have got away what I could . . . and I think Magloire Le Bihan has got more . . . he had the rearguard . . . but all the rest----"

"De Fresne?"

"Killed, I think. I saw him go down. The Imperialists were all posted there--they must have known!" And he half broke into a sob. "Oh, L'Oiseleur, L'Oiseleur . . . !"

"We will go back to the bridge," said Aymar, turning his ghastly face away. "My children----"

A man suddenly scrambled down the high bank into the road, a huge Breton, breathless and bloodstained. "I saw you, L'Oiseleur, from the field. We are making for the forest again. You have heard what happened? God's truth, if we could find the man who did it! My nephew lies there. . . ."

"We will go back and avenge him," said Aymar quickly. "How many men have you over there, Magloire? Bring them into the road. Have they all their muskets?"

"Go back!" ejaculated the giant. "You are mad, Monsieur le Vicomte! After the trouble we have had in getting away as many as we have! The place is a shambles, more or less!"

"Magloire is right," said young de Soulanges. "You were not there. Believe me, it is of no use! The front ranks were eaten up--those that were not killed. Besides," he added, sinking his voice and pulling with a bleeding hand at his leader's arm, so that L'Oiseleur bent his head, "besides, I doubt if you could get them to follow you!"

And looking round the men whose moods he knew so well L'Oiseleur saw that this was probably true. It would have been a terrible blow, had he been capable of feeling it.

"Very well," he said between his teeth, "then I shall go alone. Stand back, please!"

The boy clung all the tighter. "La Rocheterie, you are our only hope! Don't desert us! Oh, don't do that! It is suicide . . . and to what purpose?"

To what purpose, indeed! Aymar tried to loosen the bleeding fingers. De Soulanges clasped his boot.

"You will only get yourself captured, La Rocheterie," he sobbed, "and what good will that do?"

Captured! That was the last thing Aymar intended--and by Colonel Richard, too. . . . The fugitives, hearing the altercation, were pressing closely round his horse now, supplicating like children that he should not abandon them. And he saw Magloire's face of black amazement as he turned suddenly round and heard.

Well, he could always do it later on by his own hand. Aymar made a supreme effort, and, rallying all his faculties, began to issue orders as quickly and clearly as if, in the last few minutes, the whole of life had not gone sliding down to ruin.

And somehow he got them back, straggling and disheartened remnant that they were--ninety odd out of five hundred men--to their old quarters in the Bois des Fauvettes, where for the present they would be safe, and where (almost more important still) they felt that they were safe. And there they lifted him, stiff and spent, from his horse--L'Oiseleur, who had heard of the ambush and had nearly killed himself in riding to warn them of it, L'Oiseleur, who was so terribly distressed at what had befallen their comrades, but who, at least, was with them again. Could they do too much for him?

Their simple care for him was the final sword-thrust; and when, having dragged himself into the deserted little woodcutter's hut which was his own old headquarters, it became apparent that his right arm and shoulder were by this time temporarily useless from his fall, and Clément de Soulanges, wounded as he was himself, had insisted on rubbing them for him, it had been all Aymar could do to refrain from putting one of his pistols into the boy's hand and saying, "If you want to do something for me, use _that_!"

But soon he was too utterly exhausted for remorse or horror or any other emotion to play on him longer. He threw himself down on his couch of bracken and sleep descended like a pall. The long day was over.

(6)

But there was a waking--only too early. And by five o'clock next morning, when Aymar, very drawn but composed, was giving orders to young de Soulanges, he had already lived through years of torment. He was despatching Clément to warn du Tremblay of the disaster, and to tell him that in consequence he must not count on the support of the "Eperviers." And he had further ordered Clément--much to the latter's dismay--not to return to him, but to remain with du Tremblay.

"For I shall probably have to disband this remnant before you can get back," he said. "You see that, Clément, don't you?"

"Yes," said the boy miserably. And as he stood with bent head, fumbling with the bandage round his fingers, he added, "Am I to tell M. du Tremblay that there was probably treachery at the bridge?"

L'Oiseleur turned his head away. "You can tell him . . . that it looked like it," he answered after a moment.

When Clément was gone he sat down at the little table in the hut and covered his face. He had chosen de Soulanges to carry that bitter but unavoidable message because he was fond of him, and wanted to get him out of the way before he took his pistol in his own hand, or before the inevitable consequences of the disaster came on him from without. For, safe as his remaining men might consider themselves in the Bois des Fauvettes, Aymar knew better. In a day or two the Bonapartists at Arbelles, hearing of the affair at the bridge, would certainly follow up their comrades' success and clear out the relics of that nest of hornets in the wood. And, if he himself had not blown out his brains before that happened, he could then die sword in hand, which would be preferable. So either he must disband his men in time, or make a last stand.

Yet, now that he had heard fuller details, he knew that the affair had not been so actually bloody as he had at first been given to understand. The trap had been so well set that, after the first discharge from the hidden foe--and in particular after M. de Fresne had been seen to fall--the leaderless front ranks had been obliged to surrender. But they comprised his best, his oldest followers; it was the least devoted, the least trustworthy who, being in the rear, had escaped, and these would be all the harder to get in hand again. Moreover, worn out though he had been by the close of yesterday, it was clear to Aymar that the ambitious hopes of the big Breton, Magloire Le Bihan, which for some time he had suspected, had vastly grown during his few days' absence, and were likely to swell still more, now that he found himself virtually second-in-command. Aymar's very soul was sick as he got up and went out to inspect his men's depleted equipment--so sick that something whispered to him, "Why not tell them that it is you, and you alone, who brought about the catastrophe?" But in that case reorganization would be hopeless.

He did not sleep at all that night, and he knew that under the strain of his paralyzing secret he was beginning to lose his faculty of decision. Some of the men were slipping away already. On the other hand, there was no sign of an attack on the wood. He knew that the Imperialists had always credited him with more followers than he actually possessed. If they were hesitating on that score he could still keep their communications cut a little longer by stopping where he was. Magloire supported this idea.

So all Sunday he did his best to reorganize the handful that was left to him.

About nine o'clock a letter was brought to him. The handwriting was Avoye's . . . and Avoye seemed now to have receded into another world, and that hour in the orchard to belong to a life not this. Since his return to the wood the thought that he had saved her (as presumably he had) at the cost of other men's blood--men sent blindly to the slaughter--was so terrible that he had not been able to face it. Now here was a letter from her.

He went into the hut and opened it with unsteady hands. It was from Sessignes, and dated April 28th--Friday. So she was safe--had returned unharmed. But did he not know that by what had been paid for her return? He read:

_"Oh, my dearest, to have missed you, and at such a time! And by so little, as it were! I could have arrived last night, though late, had I but known that you were at Sessignes. If only I had! For though I was stopped at the 'Cheval Blanc' at six o'clock yesterday evening by a body of Bonapartists, and detained there for a few hours (on account, I believe, of the movement of troops) at ten o'clock I was told, very civilly, that I could continue my journey if I wished."_

Aymar stopped reading, and leant dizzily against the wall of the hut. Was he going crazy? She "would have arrived had she but known"! At ten o'clock, when Vaubernier was still in the rose-garden at Sessignes, she had been told "very civilly" that she was free to proceed--she who was to have been shot in the morning! . . . He read on to the end, the letters dancing before his eyes.

_"As it was, seeing that it was already late, and that I was tired, and since I had Agathe with me, and was quite unmolested by the officers at the inn (having in fact kept my room all evening) I decided, unfortunately, to spend the night at the 'Cheval Blanc' and proceed early next morning. But this morning I was told with equal civility, but quite firmly, that I could not do so for the moment, and it was not till about four in the afternoon that I was allowed to go on. (I suppose that troops may have been on the march again, but what movement I did hear was at daybreak.)"_

_"And then I got home, and heard that you had been here last night and had gone again--gone suddenly, having received bad news. It seems as though Fate were determined that we should not meet yesterday, and that I should not tell you myself the news which (though I have prayed and do pray for him, Aymar) I am not hypocrite enough to pretend was anything of a grief to me. But I will not write any more about it; I cannot. Shall I not see you soon?_

"_. . . That is, if all is well with you and your men? I do not like what Grand'mère told me of your departure. It seems to me that my anxiety for you weighs heavier--now. Send me a line to allay it! Oh, why could we not have met yesterday! God keep you!"_

_Why could we not have met!_ Aymar staggered over to a chair. She had never been within a hundred miles of danger--except perhaps through his own action, which appeared to have caused her a further detention. Vaubernier had then surrendered the letter without ever finding out that the peril was non-existent. No question of driving a shabby bargain with Colonel Richard; Colonel Richard had thoroughly outwitted them both--he had evidently kept Avoye until he was sure that her price had been paid. But there need never have been a price. . . . O God, there need never have been a price at all! Some mistake . . . some terrible misunderstanding--Vaubernier's--the young officer's . . . his brain reeled . . . Vaubernier's, probably. Did it matter whose? It had done its work. All the blood it had spilt was wasted; he had sent his men to death and ruined himself to no purpose whatsoever.

The shock was such that it almost deprived Aymar of the power to think, and he sat for hours at the table, the letter open before him, staring at the lantern which lit its quiet and shattering phrases, as near to madness as a healthy brain can be and yet not touch its border. When daylight came he put the letter and a pistol in his breast, and went out into the forest, so haggard that the men who saw him pass whispered that L'Oiseleur was getting stranger and stranger, that he was bewitched. . . . And this was May Day, too . . . when much magic was abroad.

But perhaps it was the May morning which joined hands with Aymar's own youth to pull him out of his pit of horror and despair. And he had a strong will; for years now he had been obliged to keep a tight hold on his emotions, only his hot temper sometimes escaping his control. He lay on the shore of a lake of bluebells, and, though he lay face downwards, their scent, their multitude and their incredible colour flooded his brain like strong music. Out of this miraculous blue swamp soared the old, steadfast trees, brilliant and tender with promise. And there, after a while, Aymar resolved that this should not be the end. At twenty-six, with his past, to die by his own hand or by a self-sought death--it was a confession of complete guilt. Open confession of his partial guilt was doubtless the easier way to deal with the burden of his secret, but it could avail no one; it would almost kill . . . two women. No, he must set his teeth, and though to be with his men, suspicious, indeed, but not suspicious of him, was little short of torment to a fastidious sense of honour, he must do it. If she had never been in danger it was going to be much easier also to keep from Avoye her central part in the tragedy . . . though Heaven alone knew how that part had been fastened on her. And who of his own party would believe a report of L'Oiseleur spread about by the enemy? More than all, in intention he was absolutely innocent. Never had he meant to sacrifice his men, even for Avoye. He was _not_ a traitor, and, but for the most appalling ill-luck, he would not now be wearing the semblance of one.

On his way back he met Magloire Le Bihan, who asked to speak to him about the men's attitude. According to him, they were by this time demented over the question of the ambush, and were searching for a victim of their suspicions. And when Aymar observed that an ambush was within the laws of war Magloire retorted,

"That depends which side is responsible for it. Come, now, Monsieur de la Rocheterie, it is too late in the day to ignore the fact that there was treachery over Friday's business!"

Aymar measured him. "It strikes me, Magloire," he said frigidly, "that you are a little forgetting that you owe your present position to accident, and that if you do not modify your tone you will find your tenure of it exceedingly short."

A gleam of rage shot into the Breton's deep-set eyes. "Accident! Pont-aux-Rochers was an accident, was it? How was it then, Monsieur le Vicomte, that you knew of it beforehand, and rode to warn us?"

"That is my affair," returned his leader. "It is enough that I did ride to warn you; you all know why I was too late. If that is all you wish to say to me, you can go. Keep the pickets out in case of a sudden attack!"

"If that happens, I dare say we shall find that someone knew of that also beforehand," muttered Magloire darkly.

"Then you will remember that I warned you of that, too," retorted Aymar. "I advise you to profit by the warning." And, turning on his heel, he left him.

Once inside the hut again he felt very tired. Two nights without sleep, three days of the most harassing remorse and strain, and now a passage of arms with his only efficient subordinate! But that Magloire, in spite of his words, had no suspicion of _him_ he was certain. It was jealousy and wounded vanity which were driving him. He would have to give him his congé directly it was possible. . . .

(7)

About two o'clock he was sitting at the rough table trying to work out a map from memory (all his effects having been lost at the bridge) when he heard something like an altercation at the door. The next moment it opened to admit a man who shut it behind him and stood facing him without a word--a lean, tallish man of about thirty-five, hard-featured and blue-eyed, and bareheaded save for a bandage round his forehead.

Aymar stared at him, amazed almost beyond speech.

"Good God! De Fresne! Then you were not----"

"I escaped--a careless sentry. No, not killed, if that is what you mean. Did you think I was?"

Aymar's head swam for a moment. He was unfeignedly glad, but with de Fresne he would probably have to have the matter out. He sprang up, holding out his hand.

"Need I say what I feel? But you are hurt!"

"Nothing much. I was stunned for a time." Then, glancing at his leader's outstretched hand, the second-in-command looked him in the face. "I can take your hand, La Rocheterie; can you take mine?"

The red ran over Aymar's features from chin to brow, and, ebbing, left him very pale. He dropped his hand. "What have you heard?"

Still looking at him very hard de Fresne put a hand inside his coat. "I have _seen_ something--something I would almost give my eyes not to have seen--my own letter in the hands of the enemy! But since, in spite of it, I find you here with the men, cannot I hope that there is some mistake about it--that it was stolen . . . lost . . . mislaid, perhaps . . . and that you did not deliberately send it to Colonel Richard as he says you did?"

There was entreaty and pain in the harsh voice, and a loophole in what it said. No!

"I would rather not lie to you, de Fresne," answered L'Oiseleur. "I . . . did send your letter to Colonel Richard. I will tell you why."

"If you please," said the other stiffly. "You will pardon me if I sit down." And he walked past him to the table.

"I am sorry I have no wine to offer you," said Aymar. "When did you last have food?"

"I need nothing, thank you." He had spread out the letter on the table and sat back, rather haggard under his bandage. Aymar came and sat down opposite him.

"How did you get the letter back?" he asked quietly.

"Colonel Richard had me in when I was recovered, and asked me if I had really written it, and if I thought you had really sent it. I said that was inconceivable, till I . . . till I saw the deciphered passages and recognized your writing. On that I said it must have been stolen from you, and I asked for it, and Richard let me have it--was glad, I think, to be rid of it, as if it soiled his fingers--and when I escaped . . . For God's sake, La Rocheterie, be quick and explain the business!"

"It is quite simple," answered Aymar with dry lips. "I took a risk which I see now that I ought never to have taken." And, after a moment's preparation, he embarked on the story, leaving out all reference to Mme de Villecresne, and making it appear that he had sent the letter purely as part of a ruse--as he so nearly had done. To avow, with the blood scarcely dry on the stones of Pont-aux-Rochers, that he had sent it to save her was more than he could bring himself to do. It would be dishonouring her. Yet he knew that the suppression was hazardous.

"And that is the explanation," said de Fresne slowly at the end. "That is why I find my letter in the enemy's possession, and why there has been this horrible disaster--merely because you were tempted to bring off a coup? And that is all you have to tell me?"

"Yes, that is all," said Aymar with a slight shade of hauteur.

De Fresne suddenly pushed away his chair and rose, went to the little unglazed window and looked out, then came back and flung himself down again. Aymar watched him, sick at heart. He _knew_--or else he disbelieved.

"But there is more," the elder man jerked out. "There is more--you know it! Why do you keep back half, you whom I have never known to lie, when I want so much to believe you? What about that bargain with Colonel Richard?"

"I have not said anything about a bargain."

"Exactly. That is what I complain of. Because Colonel Richard did."

For the second time Aymar turned white. "What did he tell you?"

"Merely that--that you sent the letter as part of a bargain struck with him. He did not specify what the compact was. But how could any compact with the enemy be honourable? You tell me the whole thing was a ruse; perhaps the bargain was part of the ruse then--a mere pretext to make them swallow the bait? If so, of course . . ."

He looked at him questioningly. And L'Oiseleur sat silent, very pale, staring at the knots in the rough table. Since, miracle of mercy, Colonel Richard had held his tongue as to the nature of the bargain and since, in the event (though not in intention) the bargain had proved a farce, no bargain at all, how easy to say so? But he had enough on his soul. He shook his head.

"You will not tell me what it is?" asked de Fresne.

"No. But there was nothing dishonourable in it. I got nothing----" But here he stopped.

"Then who did? There must be two parties to a bargain. Is there any one in the world, La Rocheterie, for whom you ought to sacrifice four hundred men--and your own honour?"

Aymar winced. "I have told you, de Fresne," he said rather hotly, "that the last idea in my mind was the possibility of my men's being victims. Have I shown myself so careless of them in the past?"

De Fresne shook his bandaged head. "It looks very bad. If you refuse to say what the bargain was, it will certainly be thought to be a dishonourable one."

"I cannot help what people think. And--pardon me for referring to it--I have a certain reputation."

"Yes," agreed the older man. "Yes, that is the tragedy of it." He put his hands up to his head and sighed. "Such an unheard-of thing--to send a letter with vital information straight to the enemy. . . . You have offered me an explanation which I do not doubt is true as far as it goes, but which has the most important factor left out. How can you expect it to satisfy me? My opinion, you will perhaps retort, is not of much account, but you must recognize yourself, La Rocheterie, that you are in a horrible position. This story will be all over Brittany in a few days, for all Richard's officers know that you sent the letter."

"Well?"

"What steps are you going to take about it?"

"None," replied L'Oiseleur, leaning his head on his hand.

De Fresne stared at him, frowning. "I do not think that you are taking this business seriously enough."

And at that Aymar raised his head and laughed. "Yes, if not having had any sleep for two nights, if thinking about it every moment of the twenty-four hours, and having only this morning finally made up my mind not to blow my brains out is not taking it seriously, then I am not doing so!"

"I'm sorry," said his lieutenant briefly. "Do you intend, then, just to go on and disregard--what will be said?"

"I thought I would try that," replied Aymar, leaning back in his chair and suddenly looking very young and tired. "I would rather tell the men, but it could do no good, and I think I ought to pull the remnant together and keep the enemy's communications cut a little longer.--You see, after all, I am not entirely bought by the Imperialists!"

"I never said you were," retorted de Fresne gruffly. "But I think that you will find yourself obliged to take some definite step.--May I say what I think you ought to do?"

The young man nodded.

"Give up your command for the time, go to Sol de Grisolles, and ask for a military enquiry, so that you can justify yourself."

"Give up my command--have myself put under arrest!" exclaimed L'Oiseleur. "No, certainly not!" He looked at the giver of this unwelcome advice a moment and added, "May I ask what you mean by 'ought'--that it would be to my advantage, or that you conceive it to be my duty?"

"Both," answered de Fresne with brevity.

Aymar's eyes flashed dangerously. "Are you going to teach me----" he began, and then, with a great effort, stopped himself. "Tell me, have you communicated any of your knowledge to the men?"

"No, of course I have not. Except for some necessary converse with them--in which I learnt that you were here--and for trying to assuage a certain excitement that there was over my reappearance, I came straight to you.--You are aware, no doubt, that they are out of hand?"

"Very well aware! And yet you suggest that I should vacate my command!"

"It would not, I admit, be a happy moment to succeed you, La Rocheterie, even temporarily. But I will take the command--if you offer it me."

Aymar sprang to his feet. "Monsieur de Fresne! This is a little too strong! I gave you leave to advise me, not to dictate to me!"

"Don't quarrel with me, La Rocheterie! believe me, I don't want to!" And de Fresne's tone showed it. "Won't you do it?" he asked again after a pause. "It is the only profitable step that you can take."

And for an instant or two, as well as his wearied brain would let him, the young man did weigh the proposal. But he had just, with no small effort, screwed himself up to quite another course. This course would involve having the core of the business dragged out into the light of day, the unveiling of Avoye's unconscious share in the disaster, the bandying about of her name, her relations to him. . . .

"I am sure that you are advising me to the best of your ability, de Fresne," he said more gently. "And I beg your pardon if I was rather short with you just now, for, Heaven knows, it would be a thankless task you would take up. But I cannot do what you ask."

Nicolas de Fresne sat for a moment without moving; then he got to his feet with a sigh. "Very well," he said. He looked down at his left side. "My sword is in the enemy's hands, so I am unable to ask you to accept it, save figuratively."

Aymar stepped backwards as if he had been struck.

"I cannot do anything else," said de Fresne, looking at the hut wall beyond him.

"You are resigning because I will not!"

"If you like to put it that way."

"Then you . . . you do think that ugly thing of me, de Fresne! Don't you know me--don't you know my family history? You, who have fought with me, and know what memories I carry, you think I _could_ betray my dead!"

"I cannot reconcile it with my sense of honour," replied de Fresne, standing up very stiff--the stiffer, no doubt, that he was moved by the agony in the appeal, "that you refuse to take the obvious method of clearing your name. I do not say that I think you a traitor, for, as you say, I know you. . . . But, painful as it is, I must ask you to excuse me from serving under you any longer."

Save for the sweep of a pine-branch over the roof the silence was then absolute. In that silence Aymar put his left hand on his sword; and very slowly his head went down on his breast.

When he lifted it his mouth was set, his eyes very bright. "I hope my sense of honour is not less keen than yours, Monsieur de Fresne," he said quietly. "I must beg to refuse your sword. . . . I will ask you, instead, to accept mine." And, unfastening it, sheath and all, he laid it on the table with the hilt towards his second-in-command.

(8)

". . . Does not that satisfy you?" asked Aymar after a moment. "I cannot do more."

De Fresne woke from what seemed a stupor. "You have done too much. Take it back--I never meant that! I have no right to demand your sword. Take it and put it into the General's hands."

His leader gave a little smile. "I had just as soon surrender it to you; and you have none yourself now.--But perhaps you would rather not wear mine."

De Fresne looked from the sheathed blade on the table to its owner, and abruptly held out his hand.

But Aymar shook his head. "No--not yet. Afterwards, if you like. . . . And now, how are you going to account to the men for my departure?"

"You will have to say something yourself, I think, L'Oiseleur.--My God, how I hate doing this!"

Aymar had sat down again. "Let me put you in possession of certain facts before I leave you," he said composedly. "First, about du Tremblay. Of course I--you--cannot support him now. I sent de Soulanges to him on Saturday morning with the news, but you must know nevertheless what his plans are. I believe I have not yet destroyed the cipher notes I made at our interview." He searched in a pocket. "No, here they are; and I can leave them with you as a memorandum. I put them into cipher because secrecy as to his real intention is all important. You see that on Friday next he proposes to move along the Aven in such a way as to deceive the Bonapartists into thinking that he means to cross. But he will not cross; his real objective is Chalais, which, having caused the enemy to concentrate, as he hopes, on the wrong side of the river, he calculates on carrying by a coup de main. Meanwhile--what's that?"

He sprang up, thrusting the paper back into his pocket, for there had come a sudden rush of feet and of excited voices outside, and--an unprecedented thing--the hut door was abruptly flung wide, revealing two or three of the Eperviers. For a second L'Oiseleur stood amazed; the next, he strode forward.

"What is the meaning of this? Who told you to come here?"

A confused babel from outside answered him. All his remaining men appeared to be there, and among them, of course, the towering form of Magloire Le Bihan. But he seemed to be trying to keep the crowd back.

"If you have a spokesman I will hear you," said Aymar, frowning. "Otherwise, leave my quarters at once!"

One of the foremost invaders, advancing a little over the threshold, thereupon threw out a hand towards de Fresne, and said meaningly, "Perhaps _he_ can explain what happened at Pont-aux-Rochers!" And instantly other voices took him up. "He knows who the traitor was!" "L'Oiseleur, make him tell us!"

A swift glance passed between Aymar and his subordinate. It was seen and misunderstood. A roar went up.

"Comrades, it was M. de Fresne himself! And L'Oiseleur knows it!"

More Chouans began to crowd in, threateningly; the narrow doorway was blocked. Very angry, Aymar advanced on the invaders.

"Leave my quarters at once, men!" he said imperiously. "No, M. de Fresne is no traitor--far from it! There has been no treachery in this business, only a mistake."

The Eperviers retreated a little from before him, but the hut was not cleared. "Mistake . . . mistake!" the word was flung about. "A mistake that needs atoning for!" "M. de Fresne's then!" "Let M. de Fresne explain why he led us into an ambush!" "Aye, and let him explain why he moved us out of the wood here while L'Oiseleur was away!"

"M. de Fresne has nothing to account for," cried his leader hotly. "And if he had, he accounts for it to me, and not to you!"

"L'Oiseleur knows that it is M. de Fresne," repeated the originator of this idea stubbornly. "That was why he came riding all that way to warn us. Let M. de Fresne come out and answer for himself!"

They were horribly tenacious when once they had got an idea into their heads; Aymar knew that well. And this most fallacious notion must be dispelled at all costs. A little behind him, his arms folded, de Fresne was now facing the intruders with a slightly ironical expression. The men pushed forward once more.

"Give us up M. de Fresne, Monsieur de la Rocheterie! Let him come out and explain to us!" And all at once a perfect howl went up. "What is that paper he is putting into his coat?"

For the elder man, suddenly remembering the incriminating letter lying on the table behind him, had turned his back, and was now thrusting it into his breast.

"Go out of this place!" exclaimed L'Oiseleur. He laid a hand on his pistol. "I will shoot the first man who stirs another step. Go outside, all of you!"

They surged back a little.

"May I speak to you, sir?" enquired Magloire from his place in the rear. Aymar could not but motion him to come forward. After all, he was an officer, and had certainly not been inciting the rest . . . at this moment, anyhow.

The giant came, saluting. "I told you, Monsieur le Vicomte," he said in a low voice, "that they were crazy about this idea of treachery, and now, if there is going to be a mystery, there will be no holding them. Why is M. de Fresne hiding that paper? There'll be violence if you can't explain!"

Yes, de Fresne was hiding a paper--to save him! It was _his_ doing that his lieutenant was in this utterly false position. What must he be thinking? Intolerably nettled, Aymar acted on the first impulse that came to him--a thing he was always too prone to do when the risk was his alone.

"You are right," he replied, "and there shall be no mystery. I will show you myself what is in that paper, and then you will know that M. de Fresne is perfectly innocent in the matter of Pont-aux-Rochers. Monsieur de Fresne, give me that letter! You shall have it back."

De Fresne turned round, appalled. "La Rocheterie, don't do it!" he whispered. "They will not touch me. Don't show it them, for God's sake!"

His words, for all that he had dropped his voice, were audible in the stillness which had now descended. And they produced, not unnaturally, a tenfold stronger impression of his own guilt than before. Something like an ugly rush would have taken place towards him but that the doorway was so narrow and that L'Oiseleur, springing between him and the assailants, drew a pistol and cocked it. The wave in consequence swayed back again.

"Give me the letter, de Fresne!" he repeated over his shoulder.

"No, no--it's too dangerous!"

"Dangerous! At least, then, it shall be dangerous to the right person! Give me the letter!"

And, the pistol in his right hand directed at his followers, Aymar held out his left.

"God forgive me!" said de Fresne. The letter changed hands. Aymar replaced the pistol and advanced to the door, and, seeing that he was really coming outside, the men huddled hastily into the sunshine. Aymar followed them.

"Which of you can read?" he asked, looking round.

"You, Goulven, and you, Hervé Le Bihan? Come here, then. You see this letter, which is from M. de Fresne himself--there is his name at the end--and that it is to tell me, as was his duty, of the move he was going to make over the bridge. You can read that, eh? Well, that is all--that is the paper which you foolishly think he was trying to hide."

He kept the letter in his own hands, while, bending over it on either side, with grunts and efforts, the two men laboriously went through its contents, repeating the words aloud, unperturbed by the deciphered passage. And Aymar looked over their heads at the rest and wondered what was going to happen next. To hold them in rein now needed a tight grip, and he was very tired, and more than heartsick. . . .

"Well, are you satisfied?" he asked patiently.

"Yes," said Goulven slowly, "that is what M. de Fresne did--he took us to this place, the bridge of Pont-aux-Rochers. But why did he write it down so that the Blues knew it?"

"I tell you," said the young man, not patiently this time, "that he wrote it to me, while I was away, so that I should know it." And as they bent their heads once more, and tried to peer at the address on the other side, he added, "You can see for yourselves that it was sent to me at Sessignes," and turned over the letter.

As he did so de Fresne, behind him, made, unseen, a gesture of desperation--and Aymar himself turned cold as he saw, on the top left-hand corner of the reverse, a bold endorsement in another hand than de Fresne's . . . "Sent to me by the Vicomte de la Rocheterie, called 'L'Oiseleur', on the night of April 27th, 1815.--A. RICHARD." He shifted his hold of the paper like lightning, so that his left hand covered that corner instead of the lower; but even so the signature was visible. Perhaps the slow minds of his followers would not grasp its meaning. . . .

"There, Hervé," he said carelessly, managing to master the swift impulse to snatch the whole thing quickly away, "you see this was really sent to me." And he was on the point of folding up the letter when a hand fell on his left wrist. It was Magloire's. He had been looking over the shoulder of his cousin Hervé.

"Wait a moment, L'Oiseleur," he said coolly. "What is Colonel Richard's name doing on the outside of this letter, then?"

Aymar's blood leapt up at the presumption of the grasp and the tone. He looked at Magloire with such fire that the giant, muttering, "I beg your pardon," recoiled. And Aymar, clutching at the first excuse that came into his head, said haughtily, as he folded up the letter, "M. de Fresne has been a prisoner; it is quite natural that Colonel Richard should have examined his papers."

As acting his composed demeanour was excellent, but the excuse he had given was, as he instantly recognized, not so happy. It was admitting that de Fresne had had the letter in his possession again. And as a result the man Goulven, evidently bewildered, remarked, "But that letter could not have been among his papers, Monsieur le Vicomte. He sent it to you; you said so. You had not sent it to him!"

"No, not to _him!_" broke in Magloire significantly. And, thrusting aside the man between them, he faced his young leader. "There was something else written in the corner, L'Oiseleur. Your hand was over it. Let us see that!"

He had thrown aside the scabbard. It was war. But before Aymar could say anything de Fresne, pushing forward, exclaimed quickly, "What Colonel Richard wrote on my papers only concerns me. Give me my letter back, please, La Rocheterie!"

Instantly the dull and tenacious suspicions of that crowd were rekindled. "No, no, M. de Fresne wants to hide it!" was shouted, and the words "ambush," "treachery" began once more to fly about.

But Magloire Le Bihan was unmoved by them, and simply repeated his request a little more threateningly. "Will you let us see what is written on that letter, Monsieur le Vicomte, or must we take it from you?"

"Take it from me!" exclaimed Aymar, at boiling pitch. "_Take_ it!" Then he suddenly stopped.

There was a tense pause. Under the wide-brimmed hats with the pendent ribbons the eyes of all those eager, saturnine faces were fixed on him. Should he tear the letter up? No--they would seize the fragments, and the very action would be a confession of guilt. He stood on the edge of an unimagined precipice; better to leap in than be pushed.

"Very well," he said contemptuously, "you can see it . . . and make what you can of it!" He held out the letter to Magloire, half turned his back on him, and folded his arms. Almost instantly Magloire smote the letter and burst into a hoarse laugh.

"Listen, _les gars_, what is written on this letter--what L'Oiseleur was trying to hide!" And slowly, clearly, he read out the endorsement, read it twice, "Sent to me by the Vicomte de la Rocheterie, called 'L'Oiseleur', on the night of April 27th, 1815.--A. RICHARD."

But his hearers were so puzzled that they merely gaped in silence.

"You must be fools if you don't understand!" shouted Magloire, brandishing the letter. "It is not M. de Fresne at all--it is L'Oiseleur himself who has betrayed us--L'Oiseleur who sent this with his own hands to the Blues to tell them that we should be at Pont-aux-Rochers last Friday morning . . . and took care not to be there himself!"

Aymar leapt forward. "How _dare_ you----" he began; but his words were drowned in uproar. "It's not true, Magloire, he came to warn us! L'Oiseleur, say it's not true!" That brief monosyllable was hurtling about like a missile, as he braced himself to meet the crucial moment with the knowledge that his hold was slipping, slipping. . . . But there was no hesitation in the way he faced the questioners.

"It is quite true, men," he said steadily, "that I sent the letter to Colonel Richard, but the doing so was part of a plan for----"

He got no further, for the simple reason that he could not make himself heard above Magloire's triumphant bellowing.--There was nothing for it but to shoot him out of hand. He drew his pistol, cocked it, and shouting, "I will give you three seconds to stop that noise!" levelled it at the mutineer. Almost immediately his pistol arm was seized. Furious, and as surprised as furious, Aymar turned on his assailant to find that it was Hervé, Magloire's cousin. "Let go my arm instantly!" he cried. He almost succeeded in freeing it, but in the struggle he lost his pistol; at the moment it was dragged from his hold the hammer fell and a man near clapped his hand to his arm with a scream. Next second Magloire himself had seized his leader's other arm and laid a powerful hand on his shoulder. "He will shoot us all if we are not careful!" he shouted.

For an instant longer Aymar threw every ounce of his strength into the endeavour to throw off the double grasp. But Magloire only laughed; even L'Oiseleur, no weakling, was but a child in his hold. Aymar ceased struggling. If it was useless, it was a mistake.

But Le Bihan was going too fast for the majority. Out of the clamour came cries, almost terrified cries, of "Don't touch him! Let him go, Magloire--it will be the worse for you! He has the _jartier_! The _jartier_, Magloire! Let him go!"

And the rebel was obviously taken aback for a moment; he had forgotten to reckon with a superstition which he did not share. For one instant hope flared up in his captive's brain--and died as quickly. Deliverance would never come on that score!

"_Has_ he got it?" yelled Magloire, his eyes on the young man's face. "Has he got it? The luck would never stay with a traitor!"

A quiver went through L'Oiseleur from head to foot.

"No, he must have it!" cried the bewildered voices. "He always wears it. Show it us, L'Oiseleur!"

Aymar, white to the lips, retorted, "I shall show you nothing of the sort till Magloire Le Bihan is shot for insubordination!"

"We need not wait for any conditions of that kind!" sneered Magloire. "_I_ will show you, since L'Oiseleur is so reluctant." And before Aymar guessed what he was about he had drawn his hunting knife and inserted it under his left sleeve.

Less because of what that action must inevitably bring to light, than because it was so intolerable to him to be held as he was and subjected to search, Aymar did once more try violently for a second or two to withdraw his arm from the iron grip. It was scarcely, therefore, Le Bihan's fault that the two-edged hunting knife cut rather more than it was intended to do. An instant later Magloire's powerful hands had made short work of the seams of coat and shirt alike; these were ripped asunder to the shoulder, and he was gazing delightedly at the bare arm he held captive.

He laughed. To him, as to L'Oiseleur himself, the amulet was a farce to overawe children, but the life of him who once wore it might be hanging, for all that, on the absence of that frail circlet of rushes. Aymar had never given the _jartier_ a thought since it had broken in that blossomladen place which had witnessed alike his brief moments of happiness and the beginning of this black hour, but now . . . Was that going to undo him in the end--the foolish, half-fraudulent charm he had thought he need wear no longer?

He was for a moment barely conscious that Magloire was holding his naked arm upwards at full stretch so that all could see the talisman was gone. Moreover, down that arm was now running a thread of crimson --blood like any other man's. L'Oiseleur, of the charmed life, was no longer invulnerable . . . and naturally, since he no longer wore the charm.

The effect of the double revelation on those superstitious minds was paralyzing. The Eperviers began to huddle away in silence from the leader who had been so lucky because he wore the amulet--and who, by the same reasoning, was a definite source of ill-luck because he wore it no longer. The _jartier_ had left him; therefore anything was possible. And it was May Day . . . when much magic was abroad. . . . Magloire read all this in the fierce, frightened faces; he nodded across to Hervé, made a sign, and his own immediate partisans closed round, so that the giant was able to let another man take his place, and be free to direct the course of what he had at last accomplished.

Aymar suffered the change of guardianship without protest. What was the use of fighting the situation any longer? If his men, his own men, could turn against him like this. . . . Yet Eveno would have been dead at his feet before a finger could have been laid on his leader . . . but he himself had sent Eveno to death. . . . Out of the bad dream that it had all become now he heard only de Fresne's voice, hot and incisive:

"M. de la Rocheterie is my prisoner, men! He has already given up his sword to me, and he will answer for any mistake that he has made to----"

"No!" broke in Magloire still more incisively, "he is ours! And he will answer to _us_, Monsieur de Fresne! Take him down to the clearing, _gars_; we can go into this matter better there."

(9)

They took Aymar down the little slope from the woodcutter's hut. He went unresisting; he was in the snare, the snare of his own devising--he, the Fowler . . . and now he began to be sure that there was only one way out of it, and this wood was to see that way taken.

The clearing was some hundred yards long and thirty wide; the beech trees in all their new glory stood round it, dazzlingly green against the more reluctant oaks. There were windflowers scattered under them like snowflakes, in one place, half seen, a pond of bluebells, and at the farther end a May tree, robed as a bride.

Magloire had preceded the little procession, and was now standing near a large solitary beech at the nearer end of the glade. When they came up he pointed to it in silence.

The Vicomte de la Rocheterie, descendant of Crusaders, flushed deeply. "I give you my word of honour not to stir from this spot," he said in a low voice.

The Chouan shook his head. "You might be tempted," he replied curtly. "And if, later on . . . Hi, Eloi, fetch a rope!"

And Aymar set his teeth hard as his guards, after a second or two's hesitation, pressed him back against the smooth grey trunk, rocklike in its solidity. Even before the rope was brought someone produced a piece of rough cord, not very thick, and, extending his arms behind him part of the way round the great tree, they fastened the cord to either wrist. By that device alone he was effectually a prisoner. The biting shame of it surged over him in a tide of wrath and defiance.

"Guilen--Coatsaliou--Le Merzerr--Gloannec!" he called out suddenly, "are you going to stand by and see this done?"

A huge hand came across his mouth, forcing his head back against the tree trunk. "We are all going to see justice done, Monsieur le Vicomte," said Magloire, the hand's owner. "If it has to be done on you, so much the worse for you! But done it will be." And as he removed his hand from the disgusted lips the rope, which had meanwhile arrived, was passed across L'Oiseleur's shoulders and tightened. And when it was knotted firmly across his shoulders, across the middle of his body, and just above his knees he could not stir a quarter of an inch.

"That will do," said Magloire. "Now Monsieur de la Rocheterie can answer our questions."

Aymar's lip curled. "Do you imagine for a moment that I shall do so, after this?" he demanded.

"You would be wise," said Hervé Le Bihan sombrely. "We have a right to ask." He came closer. "Monsieur de la Rocheterie, why did you send M. de Fresne's letter to Colonel Richard?"

Aymar took no notice of Hervé, but, turning his head, the only part of his body which remained now at his own disposal, he looked steadily at the arch-rebel who had broken his dominion, subjected him to an undreamt-of humiliation, and was no doubt contemplating the last supreme outrage, and said, as coldly as if he were judge, not victim, "My reason was given to M. de Fresne; when it was offered to you, you refused to hear it. It is a farce to ask me for it now, and you know it!"

At that, as though it were an appeal to him, de Fresne sprang up from the log at some distance on which he had been sitting, his head in his hands, during the carrying out of the indignity which he was powerless to prevent. "L'Oiseleur is right!" he cried, coming into the centre of the clearing. "He has given me his reason; he is ready to give it to a court of enquiry, the only tribunal which has the right to demand it."

Magloire shook his head. "We want no courts of enquiry. We are judges here! Let us have the reason!"

De Fresne looked appealingly at the beech tree.

"You can tell them if you like," said its captive indifferently.

And de Fresne had to bring out, as the only hope of saving his leader, the justification of the latter's conduct which had been so far from satisfying him a short time ago. He did his best with it.

When he had finished there was silence for a moment. Aymar, in a curiously detached way, was trying to consider what he should say if he heard that explanation for the first time. He was also becoming aware of the extreme discomfort, not to say pain, caused by the position of his strained arm and shoulder. The discomfort was not likely to grow less.

"Now, Monsieur de Fresne," said Magloire, "tell us honestly, as you are a gentleman, what you thought of that explanation of M. de la Rocheterie's?"

De Fresne had not expected this, evidently. After a second or two's unhappy pause he said, looking on the ground, "Everybody is liable to make mistakes of judgment. I----"

"Give us a direct answer, please!" interposed Magloire.

"Tell the truth, de Fresne!" said Aymar suddenly. "It is always best."

The elder man glanced at the sardonic and defiant face, with the lock of rust-coloured hair, disordered in the struggle, fallen across the brow, and looked away. "I . . . I did not think it altogether satisfactory," he said unwillingly, "and so I advised M. de la Rocheterie to give up his sword--which you see he has done--and to submit himself to a court of war."

A growl broke out. "They do not like that term, my friend," observed Aymar. "They prefer private murder."

"It was not murder then, when you sent five hundred men to the death you had prepared for them?" asked the president of this tribunal, and Aymar did not answer him. For the last time, possibly, the vain and scorching tide of regret rose up about him, to the very throat. . . . But he was paying now--he could hardly pay more bitterly if they did proceed to murder him. . . . Murder him? No, surely, surely it could not be that he, Aymar de la Rocheterie, L'Oiseleur, was going to end like this, here and now. . . it was unthinkable. . . .

He came back to hear de Fresne saying, "What I believe is that M. de la Rocheterie had some other reason for his action which he did not see fit to reveal to me. And it must have been a good reason, worthy of L'Oiseleur, of the leader who held the Moulin Brûlé." Then his agitation got the better of him, "Oh, for God's sake untie him! you can't realize what you are doing--you, his own men!"

"Our leader, L'Oiseleur, exists no longer," said Magloire Le Bihan. "If M. de la Rocheterie has any further explanation, as you suggest, he had better give it to us at once."

"May I speak to him?" asked de Fresne suddenly.

"If you promise not to touch the ropes," answered Magloire.

"I promise," said de Fresne.

He came up to the tree, whiter than Aymar himself. "La Rocheterie, aren't you going to try to save yourself? The bargain--what was it? You must reveal it now!"

Aymar looked at him gravely. "Mon ami, I cannot."

De Fresne smote his empty hands together. "Tell them something! I cannot do anything more. It rests with you alone now."

L'Oiseleur shook his head. "What I should tell them would do me no good in their eyes--though it was not dishonourable. And even if it would save me, I would not tell them--now. . . . No, leave me to my fate, de Fresne . . . but try to get them to be quick about it!"

"You should never have shown them the letter!" said his lieutenant, tears in his eyes. "I would rather have let them think that I was to blame. If only I had not come back . . . if only I had not brought the letter! Oh, my God, to see you there like that . . . it is too dreadful!"

"No, you are not to blame," replied Aymar steadily, though de Fresne's words made the ropes seem tighter. "You acted as an honest man in coming back to me with the letter . . . I can't shake hands with you now . . . I would like you to keep my sword if you will?"

De Fresne looked hard at him, nodded, dashed the back of his hand over his eyes, and, turning away without another word, carried his agitation and, evidently, his arguments, into the midst of the discussion which was going forward, with obvious differences of opinion and with frequent glances towards the beech tree.

Aymar suddenly felt that he had been there a long time. The sun was hot; his head was aching, and he would have given anything, almost, in the world--though everything was ceasing to have value for him now--if he could have had his arms unbound.

And now Hervé and one or two others were coming to him again, Magloire remaining at a distance. "Monsieur le Vicomte," said the former, "you have heard what M. de Fresne has said. He has acknowledged that he did not find your explanation of your conduct satisfactory"--de Fresne suddenly looked round, anguish on his face--"he says that you gave up your sword and were going before a court of war. But we--what is left of us after the trap you arranged for us at Pont-aux-Rochers--consider that we have a better right to try you than a lot of gentry of whom we have never heard. Do you still refuse to say anything in your own defence?"

"I do, most emphatically," returned Aymar. "I acknowledge no right of the kind. You have defied my authority, you have outraged my person, and even if you intend to kill me in cold blood I shall not plead to you. You need not therefore waste time!"

So they went away--rather hesitatingly, it was true--and seemed to enter into fresh discussions from which de Fresne's voice emerged from time to time; he appeared to be threatening them. Aymar had an impression that they were drawing lots, but on the whole he felt curiously little interest in their deliberations. He found the delicate little windflowers at his feet more interesting; what a pity that they had been so trampled! More and more the peculiar effect of strain and lack of sleep was beginning to make itself felt--that sensation of having a hollow in one's brain, of being maimed of one's faculties. But it did not matter now . . . though it _had_ mattered up there by the hut, before his control of the mutineers had slipped from him. Yes, he had made a mess of that; he ought to have shot Magloire at once. . . . "But I did not seem able to make up my mind," he murmured, as if he were speaking to someone near. "And besides, everything was my fault." The windflowers looked up at him then with their shy compassion.

He lifted his head and gazed down the clearing at the shifting groups in their gay embroidered jackets, blue and yellow and white. They seemed a little blurred; did this strange feeling which was growing on him betoken faintness? Whatever they did to him it would be intolerable to faint first; they would think he was afraid. . . . Could he bring himself, rather than risk that, to ask to have his arms--only his arms untied? Not yet . . . Oh, how slow they were!

Suddenly, out of nowhere, came a vision of Avoye, waiting for an answer to her letter . . . the answer that, now, she would never receive . . . that he would never write--walking perhaps on the terrace under his window, with the dog Sarrasin beside her, thinking of those long years of patience, and how they had ended at last. . . . _How they had ended!_ And they were ending like this!

For a second or two the young man was hard put to it to keep his composure. He threw his head back against the great pillar behind him, the heart in him beating with fury and longing and shame. Still, under his tight-shut lids, he could see her--grave, but with a little smile round her beautiful mouth--while he, who, holding her tenderly, should, only four nights ago, have bent to kiss it, had his arms stretched out behind him and was fastened himself immovably to a tree, in the sight of all his men. . . . Another wave of faintness crept towards him. . . .

--And then the dullness in his ears was suddenly rent. Two men, shouting and gesticulating, were running through the undergrowth towards the central group, and, as he heard what they were crying out, Aymar understood in a moment what had happened. They were his outposts, and the Bonapartists were advancing on the Bois des Fauvettes.

The news fell like a bombshell into the unprepared Chouans. A few ran bewildered among the trees, seeking cover; the majority were snatching up their muskets, but with panic in every movement. De Fresne and Magloire, however, had not lost their heads; the former was obviously trying to marshal the men into some kind of order to get them away. The tension held Aymar more painfully than his bonds. For there was . . . surely there was . . . a chance that he might be forgotten in the confusion! De Fresne had never once looked in his direction; with a drawn sword in his hand--which must be _his_--he was shepherding the men hastily out of the clearing, pointing the way, shouting encouragements; and Magloire, still farther away, was doing the same. And the men were obeying--they _were_ filing out. It was not going to end like this, after all!

Was it true, indeed, or a dream, that de Fresne had actually turned back, and was running stealthily up the side of the clearing under the trees, the bare blade in his hand? He could soon free him with that! O God, if only nobody turned and saw!

Vain hope! De Fresne was only a few yards off when Magloire came running into the clearing again. "No, no--that will not do!" he shouted, dropped to one knee in the middle and took a quick, steady aim at the beech tree's target.

There was a flash, a report, and a violent blow as if someone had struck him in the left shoulder. Aymar gasped a moment with the shock; then he saw de Fresne standing with the sword half lifted.

"Oh, for God's sake put it through me and finish this!" he called out to him with entreaty in his voice, and set his teeth. But the elder man, with an oath, sprang for the side of the tree. Before he got there Magloire, still kneeling, fired his second barrel, but this time the bullet missed by an inch, whizzing by Aymar's ear into the trunk beside him. "Go back--you'll be hit!" shouted L'Oiseleur; but de Fresne had already been seized by two Eperviers who had hurled themselves on him, and Aymar saw that, farther down the clearing, another man had his musket at the level.

If only it might be through the heart this time, and this purgatory be ended! But with the report came a hot and searing sensation in the right side, and the young man, biting his lips, writhed mutely for a second. The next, the whole scene began to swim away from him; yet he heard, or thought he heard, a sort of long breath of horror or satisfied vengeance run about the place, and a voice that might have been Magloire's cry something about Pont-aux-Rochers. . . . His head fell forward on his breast.

So he never saw how de Fresne, cursing wildly, freed himself from his assailants, and turned to the urgent business of leadership, since the tragedy was now played out. But the two men who had seized him, as they left the wood, turned and fired at the motionless figure against the tree. One shot sped over the bowed head into the trunk of the beech, the other ploughed straight across L'Oiseleur's breast, cutting the ribbon of his Cross of St. Louis as neatly as though it had been done on purpose, and sending the cross itself spinning to his feet. But he never moved.

And after a little the clearing, recently so clamorous with emotion, was quiet again, and a bird, hopping cautiously out on a twig of the beech tree, looked down with one round, bright eye on the strange fruitage it bore. Probably it had never before seen a man stand so still.

(10)

The bird had flown away when Aymar came out of that vague place of forgetfulness to realities. As he lifted his head he wondered dizzily why he could not move; then why someone was pressing a knife across his breast. . . . The rest was coming back; that he could not remember. He looked down, and saw that a furrow had been cut clean across his uniform, just below the rope--and not of his uniform only. And his Cross of St. Louis lay among the trampled windflowers. It all came back . . . too clearly . . .

They had left him here, to die, alone, in pain, in ignominy, in the uttermost shame that could befall a soldier--his own men. And here, lashed immovably to this hateful tree, sick with the constraint of his position as much as with the pain of his wounds, and bleeding fast from all of them, but unable to lift a finger to staunch them--here, on his feet, looking down the clearing at the drift of hawthorn blossom, he would remain till he died.

--No! not while there was his scarcely broken strength still in him! The determination to be free suddenly possessed him like fire, and now that only the tall trees watched him he began to struggle like a trapped animal. But, even with the most furious efforts, he could hardly move his body at all, for, as he soon found, he was too tightly pinned above the knees. And, even had the ropes not held him so relentlessly he could not, try as he would, get his arms free of the separate cord which held them back, almost agonizingly by this time, against the great trunk behind him. Each of his efforts only tightened its grip on his lacerated wrists--for they were raw and bleeding before he desisted from tugging. And all the while a cuckoo mocked him with its monotonous and mechanical cry, which held no hint now of the meanings of spring, but only a horrible mirth. "You are fast, you are fast, you can't get away!" . . . Yes, this was going to be the end, _his_ end, after all!

Nor was it, plainly, very far off. The only effect of Aymar's struggles had been greatly to increase the haemorrhage; the warm stream coursing down his body from his side had not only soaked by this time through his uniform, but was appearing as a spreading stain on his white buckskin breeches. He looked down at it--and at the other stains, too. It was hard to believe that he, young and strong as he was--or had been, half an hour ago--was about to die merely from that, the ebb which any charitable hand could have arrested, which his own might possibly have staunched if they had not been so simply but effectually fettered. . . . Yet that was what was going to happen--unless someone came in time.

But who could come, except the Bonapartists? And to be found by them would be intolerable, for his situation admitted of one explanation only. All the countryside knew of his defeat. It would be almost better to die than that . . . even by this death, lonely and dishonoured as it was, the death without alleviation of any kind, which for Avoye's sake he had brought upon himself--and in vain.

For the first time a groan broke from him--only to be swallowed up in the chorus of birdsong with which the green, deserted wood was now ringing. He made a last effort to wrench himself free. Useless . . . useless! But--if only he might have seen Avoye to explain before he died. What would she hear . . . afterwards? She would have all the rest of her life for the evidences of his guilt to penetrate the unbelief with which he knew quite well she would meet them at first. Gradually, as the truth leaked out, she would be forced to believe him guilty in that sense in which he never had been guilty, since he had suffered a disgraceful penalty for an act of rashness to which that merciful term would never be applied now. . . . Oh, if only he had carried out his intention of this morning, and made an end of himself before the wild hyacinths became a blur of pain to the sight, and the trees in their spring bravery merely so many stakes to be tied to! He could have lain dead with less disgrace, hidden by the bluebells till they died.

Aymar was growing much weaker; he knew it. The sunlight no longer seemed warm, and his head was beginning to swim. Only one conscious desire was left soon--to be loosed, to be able to lie down on the beech leaves at his feet, for the pain in his mangled wrists seemed worse than any of his wounds, and his position was, nakedly, torture. And he was so desperately thirsty. . . . But oblivion was advancing with faster strides now, for the anemones, the laughing May tree, the bright beeches at which he was staring were beginning to vanish and reappear again, and every breath was becoming more difficult to draw. . . .

Then pain went, and he began to have the oddest fancies. He was part of the beech tree from which he could not stir--he _was_ the beech tree. He had never been anything else. Once there had been a young man named Aymar de la Rocheterie, who had run and ridden and fought and moved about freely; but _he_ had stood here always, year in, year out, bare in the frosts of winter, clothed with green as now in spring--a splendid and vigorous tree. . . . But if that were so, how was it that Aymar de la Rocheterie was gasping so for breath--as he could hear--and that his head swam so violently . . . and that from the blue sky which showed through the brilliant leaves above him strange whirling specks like black snow were falling? How odd that was in spring . . . but was it spring when it felt so bitter cold?

As his failing senses suggested the question the spreading bough above him seemed suddenly to swoop down on him . . . then the great tree which would not let him go began itself to sink with him into a cold, suffocating darkness. . . . Aymar gave a couple of deep gasps, and his head fell forward for the second time--not to be lifted again. He had looked his last on the Bois des Fauvettes.

It was thus that the Bonapartists found him some three quarters of an hour later--save that, with the oncoming of such profound unconsciousness, the deadly haemorrhage had ceased. Only curiosity, no thought that, from his appearance, there was a glimmer of life left in him, led them to cut him down. But of their surprise, their gratification when, on searching him, they found from his papers who he was, their discovery of the cipher notes, their rough attempts at surgery and his subsequent odyssey in the cart, Aymar knew nothing whatever. Fate showed him some scrap of mercy after all.