ered a cry of joy.

He pointed to the ground. "We are right!" he said. "There are her
tracks! Come! We will overtake her yet!"

I looked, and saw the fresh prints of a horse's shoes, and felt a great
weight roll off my mind, for at least he had seen someone. I no longer
hesitated to fall in with his humour, but, riding after him, kept at
his elbow until he reached the end of the ride. Here, a vista opening
right and left, and the ground being hard and free from tracks, we
stood at a loss; until the King, whose eyesight was always of the
keenest, uttered an exclamation, and started from me at a gallop.

I followed more slowly, and saw him dismount and pick up a glove,
which, even at that distance, he had discerned lying in the middle of
one of the paths. He cried, with a flushed face, that it was Madame de
Conde's; and added: "It has her perfume--her perfume, which no one
else uses!"

I confess that this so staggered me that I knew not what to think; but,
between sorrow at seeing my master so infatuated and bewilderment at a
riddle that grew each moment more perplexing, I sat gaping at Henry
like a man without counsel. However, at the moment, he needed none,
but, getting to his saddle as quickly as he could, he began again to
follow the tracks of the horse's feet, which here were visible, the
path running through a beech wood. The branches were still bare, and
the shining trunks stood up like pillars, the ground about them being
soft. We followed the prints through this wood for a mile and a half
or more, and then, with a cry, the King darted from me, and, in an
instant, was racing through the wood at break-neck speed.

I had a glimpse of a woman flying far ahead of us; and now hidden from
us by the trunks and now disclosed; and could even see enough to
determine that she wore a yellow feather drooping from her hat, and was
in figure not unlike the Princess. But that was all; for, once
started, the inequalities of the ground drew my eyes from the flying
form, and, losing it, I could not again recover it. On the contrary,
it was all I could do to keep up with the King; and of the speed at
which the woman was riding, could best judge by the fact that in less
than five minutes he, too, pulled-up with a gesture of despair, and
waited for me to come abreast of him.

"You saw her?" he said, his face grim, and with something of suspicion
lurking in it.

"Yes, sire," I answered, "I saw a woman, and a woman