iting for me."

She gathered her skirts about her.

"Give me your hand again--it will help you."

So they ran across the fields, making for the road and the clump of
trees in the lane where Seth waited.

CHAPTER X

THE SAFETY OF MADEMOISELLE

The two men had sat for a long while facing each other, one doing all
the talking, the other listening eagerly.

"Early this morning we turned the horses loose in a field and reached
the barrier on foot," said Barrington. "We came in with the crowd, two
abusive men quarreling with a market woman over some petty transaction
regarding vegetables. I assure you, Monsieur de Lafayette, I never used
such coarse language to a woman before in all my life. She played her
part excellently. They laughed at us at the barrier, and we entered
still quarreling. The rest was easy."

So he finished his long story, which had begun with his personal affairs
in Virginia, and ended with the account of mademoiselle's flight from
the Lion d'Or on the Soisy road.

Lafayette had listened without interrupting the narrative, now he rose
slowly, and, crossing the room, looked down into the street.

"Is it possible that, in spite of your protestations, you are not
pleased to see me?" Barrington asked, after a pause.

"Yes and no, an enigmatical answer, but the only true one I can give,"
said Lafayette, turning to his companion and putting both hands upon his
shoulders. "The face is still the face of the boy I knew, and of whom I
have thought often; there is exactly that courage and daring in you
which I then perceived would one day assert themselves. Richard
Barrington has grown into just the kind of man I expected, and on that
account I am delighted to see him. But there is no place for him in
France, there is no work for an honorable volunteer; besides which, he
has already managed to slip into a very maelstrom of danger, and for
that reason I am sorry he has come."

"I find the Marquis de Lafayette much altered when I hear him speak in
such a tone of despair."

Lafayette smiled, and gently pushed Richard into a chair.

"That I do not despair easily, as a rule, may convince you that I am not
troubled without reason. The country is in the hands of fanatics, there
is no foreseeing what the end may be. On every side of us are enemies,
but we are our own worse foes. We are split into factions, fighting and
disputing with one another; the very worst of us are gaining the
predominant powe