ice of the King for its sole object.

Maurice had not exchanged confidences with Crystal since the adventure,
but his ideas--without his knowing it--absolutely coincided with hers.
He, too, was quite sure that no common footpad had engineered their
daring attack. Positive knowledge of the money and its destination had
been the fountain from which had sprung the comedy of the masked
highwayman and his little band of robbers. Maurice mentally reckoned
that there must have been at least half a dozen of these bravos--of the
sort that in these times were easily enough hired in any big city to
play any part, from that of armed escort to nervous travellers to that
of seeker of secret information for the benefit of either political
party--loafers that hung round the wine-shops in search of a means of
earning a few days' rations, discharged soldiers of the Empire some of
them, whose loyalty to the Restoration had been questioned from the
first.

Maurice had no doubt that whatever motive had actuated the originator of
the bold plan to possess himself of twenty-five million francs, he had
deliberately set to work to employ men of that type to help him in his
task.

It had all been very audacious and--Maurice was bound to admit--very
well carried out. As for the motive, he was never for a moment in doubt.
It was a Bonapartist plot, of that he felt sure, as well as of the fact
that Victor de Marmont was the originator of it all. He probably had not
taken any active part in the attack, but he had employed the
men--Maurice would have taken an oath on that!

The Comte de Cambray must have let fall an unguarded hint in the course
of his last interview with de Marmont at Brestalou, and when Victor went
away disgraced and discomfited he, no doubt, thought to take his revenge
in the way most calculated to injure both the Comte and the royalist
cause.

Satisfied with this mental explanation of past events, St. Genis had
ridden on in the darkness, his spirits kept up with hopes and thoughts
of a glaring counter revenge. But his limbs were still stiff and bruised
from the cramped position in which he had lain for so long, and
presently, when the cold drizzle began to penetrate to his bones, his
enthusiasm and confidence dwindled. The village seemed to recede further
and further into the distance. He thought when he had ridden through it
earlier in the evening that it was not very far from the scene of the
attack--a dozen kilometres perh