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"De Batz was part of the scheme I had planned for mine own escape
before I knew that those brutes meant to take Marguerite and you
as hostages for my good behaviour. What I hoped then was that
under cover of a tussle or a fight I could somehow or other
contrive to slip through their fingers. It was a chance, and you
know my belief in bald-headed Fortune, with the one solitary hair.
Well, I meant to grab that hair; and at the worst I could but die
in the open and not caged in that awful hole like some noxious
vermin. I knew that de Batz would rise to the bait. I told him in
my letter that the Dauphin would be at the Chateau d'Ourde this
night, but that I feared the revolutionary Government had got wind
of this fact, and were sending an armed escort to bring the lad
away. This letter Ffoulkes took to him; I knew that he would make
a vigorous effort to get the Dauphin into his hands, and that
during the scuffle that one hair on Fortune's head would for one
second only, mayhap, come within my reach. I had so planned the
expedition that we were bound to arrive at the forest of Boulogne
by nightfall, and night is always a useful ally. But at the
guard-house of the Rue Ste. Anne I realised for the first time
that those brutes had pressed me into a tighter corner than I had
pre-conceived."
He paused, and once again that look of recklessness swept over his
face, and his eyes--still hollow and circled--shone with the
excitement of past memories.
"I was such a weak, miserable wretch, then," he said, in answer to
Marguerite's appeal. "I had to try and build up some strength,
when--Heaven forgive me for the sacrilege--I had unwittingly
risked your precious life, dear heart, in that blind endeavour to
save mine own. By Gad! it was no easy task in that jolting
vehicle with that noisome wretch beside me for sole company; yet I
ate and I drank and I slept for three days and two nights, until
the hour when in the darkness I struck Heron from behind,
half-strangled him first, then gagged him, and finally slipped
into his filthy coat and put that loathsome bandage across my
head, and his battered hat above it all. The yell he gave when
first I attacked him made every horse rear--you must remember
it--the noise effectually drowned our last scuffle in the coach.
Chauvelin was the only man who might have suspected what had
occurred, but he had gone on ahead, and bald-headed Fortune had
passed by me, and I had managed to grab its one hair. After that
it was all quite easy. The sergeant and the soldiers had seen
very little of Heron and nothing of me; it did not take a great
effort to deceive them, and the darkness of the night was my most
faithful friend. His raucous voice was not difficult to imitate,
and darkness always muffles and changes every tone. Anyway, it
was not likely that those loutish soldiers would even remotely
suspect the trick that was being played on them. The citizen
agent's orders were promptly and implicitly obeyed. The men never
even thought to wonder that after insisting on an escort of twenty
he should drive off with two prisoners and only two men to guard
them. If they did wonder, it was not theirs to question. Those
two troopers are spending an uncomfortable night somewhere in the
forest of Boulogne, each tied to a tree, and some two leagues
apart one from the other. And now," he added gaily, "en voiture,
my fair lady; and you, too, Armand. 'Tis seven leagues to Le
Portel, and we must be there before dawn."
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