o ask your way. If one of us has
to be delivered over to death, it must be you."

"It must. I see it well."

"Yet we may both succeed in getting through, or we may both leave
our bones lying amid the eternal snows. Perhaps in years to come it
will matter little enough. Just now it seems a matter of more
importance. But I have told you this to show my trust in you, Tom.
There are not many comrades to whom I could have thus unburdened
myself. I should have had to use subtlety where now I use truth and
openness."

"You shall not find me fail you, my lord," answered Tom.

CHAPTER X. IN PERIL.

"Halt! and declare yourselves!" cried a hoarse voice speaking in
the French tongue.

"Now for it, Tom," said Lord Claud quietly, speaking between his
shut teeth. "Remember what I have told you. Be wary, be ready. We
shall get through all right. There are but two or three score, and
none of them mounted."

The travellers were passing now through the narrow territory of the
Margrave of Baden, with the Rhine upon their right, the only
protection from the frontier of France with all its hostile hosts.

The slow and inactive policy of the Margrave of Baden naturally
encouraged the enemy to send small parties of soldiers across to
harry his country; and already Tom and his master had had to dodge
and hide, or go out of their way, to avoid meeting with these bands
of inimical marauders. They were not the class of opponents whom
Lord Claud most dreaded, still they might well fall upon and make
prisoner the two English travellers; and if despatches were found
upon the person of either, they would almost certainly be shot as
spies. Indeed, so bitter was the feeling on the part of the French
after their defeat at Blenheim, that any travellers belonging to
the hated English nation went in danger of their lives.

For some time now Tom had been wearing the garb of a serving man.
His peruke had disappeared, and he wore a little dark wig that
looked like his natural hair. It excited less comment for master
and servant to travel from town to town together than for two
English gentlemen to be riding unattended through such a disturbed
country; and as they pursued their way, Lord Claud would give
minute and precise directions to Tom how to act in the event of
their falling in with one of these scouting or marauding parties,
showing such a wonderful knowledge of the tactics of forest warfare
that Tom was often astonished at him, and wo