with a smile, thinking that
it might be useful sometime, and in some way. I had scarcely done this,
and turned with the intention of exploring the street, when the door
behind me creaked on its leather hinges, and in a moment the host stood
at my elbow, and gave me a surly greeting.

Evidently his suspicions were again aroused, for from this time he
managed to be with me, on one pretence or another until noon. Moreover,
his manner grew each moment more churlish, his hints plainer; until
I could scarcely avoid noticing the one or the other. About mid-day,
having followed me for the twentieth time into the street, he came to
the point by asking me rudely if I did not need my horse.

'No,' I said. 'Why do you ask?'

'Because,' he answered, with an ugly smile, 'this is not a very healthy
place for strangers.'

'Ah!' I retorted. 'But the border air suits me, you see,'

It was a lucky answer, for, taken with my talk the night before, it
puzzled him, by suggesting that I was on the losing side, and had my
reasons for lying near Spain. Before he had done scratching his head
over it, the clatter of hoofs broke the sleepy quiet of the village
street, and the lady I had seen the night before rode quickly round the
corner, and drew her horse on to its haunches. Without looking at me,
she called to the innkeeper to come to her stirrup.

He went. The moment his back was turned, I slipped away, and in a
twinkling was hidden by a house. Two or three glum-looking fellows
stared at me as I passed down the street, but no one moved; and in two
minutes I was clear of the village, and in a half-worn track which ran
through the wood, and led--if my ideas were right--to the Chateau.
To discover the house and learn all that was to be learned about its
situation were my most pressing needs; and these, even at the risk of a
knife thrust, I was determined to satisfy.

I had not gone two hundred paces along the path, however, before I
heard the tread of a horse behind me, and I had just time to hide myself
before Madame came up and rode by me, sitting her horse gracefully, and
with all the courage of a northern woman. I watched her pass, and then,
assured by her presence that I was in the right road, I hurried after
her. Two minutes walking at speed brought me to a light wooden bridge
spanning a stream. I crossed this, and, as the wood opened, saw before
me first a wide, pleasant meadow, and beyond this a terrace. On the
terrace, pressed up