er shiver. 'What if I will not?' she said again.

'I might call to the nearest soldiers and tell them who you are,' I
answered coolly. 'I might do that, but I should not. That were a clumsy
way of punishing you, and I know a better way. I should go to the
Captain, Mademoiselle, and tell him whose horse is locked up in the inn
stable. A trooper told me--as someone had told him--that it belonged
to one of his officers; but I looked through the crack, and I knew the
horse again.'

She could not repress a groan. I waited; still she did not speak.

'Shall I go to the Captain?' I said ruthlessly.

She shook the hood back from her face and looked at me.

'Oh, you coward! you coward!' she hissed through her teeth. 'If I had a
knife!'

'But you have not, Mademoiselle,' I answered, unmoved. 'Be good enough,
therefore, to make up your mind which it is to be. Am I to go with my
news to the captain, or am I to come with you?'

'Give me the pitcher,' she said harshly.

I did so, wondering. In a moment she flung it with a savage gesture far
into the bushes.

'Come!' she said, 'if you will. But some day God will punish you!'

Without another word she turned and entered the path through the trees,
and I followed her. I suppose that every one of its windings, every
hollow and broken place in it had been known to her from childhood, for
she followed it swiftly and unerringly, barefoot as she was. I had to
walk fast through the darkness to keep up with her. The wood was quiet,
but the frogs were beginning to croak in the pool, and their persistent
chorus reminded me of the night when I had come to the house-door, hurt
and worn out, and Clon had admitted me, and she had stood under the
gallery in the hall. Things had looked dark then. I had seen but a very
little way ahead then. Now all was plain. The commandant might be here
with all his soldiers, but it was I who held the strings.

We came to the little wooden bridge and saw beyond the dark meadows the
lights of the house. All the windows were bright. Doubtless the troopers
were making merry.

'Now, Mademoiselle,' I said quietly, 'I must trouble you to stop here,
and give me your attention for a few minutes. Afterwards you may go your
way.'

'Speak!' she said defiantly. 'And be quick! I cannot breathe the air
where you are! It poisons me!'

'Ah!' I said slowly. 'Do you think that you make things better by such
speeches as those?'

'Oh!' she cried and I heard her teeth c