uncomfortable state to that of being left
alone, on the dark St. Martin Road. Then the three men fell in line.

"Quick!" said Chauvelin, impatiently, "we have already wasted much
valuable time."

And the firm footsteps of Chauvelin and Desgas, the shuffling gait of
the old Jew, soon died away along the footpath.

Marguerite had not lost a single one of Chauvelin's words of command.
Her every nerve was strained to completely grasp the situation first,
then to make a final appeal to those wits which had so often been called
the sharpest in Europe, and which alone might be of service now.

Certainly the situation was desperate enough; a tiny band of
unsuspecting men, quietly awaiting the arrival of their rescuer, who
was equally unconscious of the trap laid for them all. It seemed so
horrible, this net, as it were drawn in a circle, at dead of night, on a
lonely beach, round a few defenceless men, defenceless because they were
tricked and unsuspecting; of these one was the husband she idolised,
another the brother she loved. She vaguely wondered who the others were,
who were also calmly waiting for the Scarlet Pimpernel, while death
lurked behind every boulder of the cliffs.

For the moment she could do nothing but follow the soldiers and
Chauvelin. She feared to lose her way, or she would have rushed
forward and found that wooden hut, and perhaps been in time to warn the
fugitives and their brave deliverer yet.

For a second, the thought flashed through her mind of uttering the
piercing shrieks, which Chauvelin seemed to dread, as a possible warning
to the Scarlet Pimpernel and his friends--in the wild hope that they
would hear, and have yet time to escape before it was too late. But she
did not know if her shrieks would reach the ears of the doomed men.
Her effort might be premature, and she would never be allowed to make
another. Her mouth would be securely gagged, like that of the Jew, and
she, a helpless prisoner in the hands of Chauvelin's men.

Like a ghost she flitted noiselessly behind that hedge: she had taken
her shoes off, and her stockings were by now torn off her feet. She felt
neither soreness nor weariness; indomitable will to reach her husband
in spite of adverse Fate, and of a cunning enemy, killed all sense of
bodily pain within her, and rendered her instincts doubly acute.

She heard nothing save the soft and measured footsteps of Percy's
enemies on in front; she saw nothing but--in her mind's e