e impotent and the governments distraught.

It was late when Simon at last fell into a troubled sleep.

It seemed to him that after an hour or two some one opened the door of
his room; and he remembered that he had not bolted it. Light footsteps
crossed the carpet. Then he had the impression that some one bent
over him and that this some one was a woman. A cool breath caressed
his face and in the darkness he divined a shadow moving quickly away.

He tried to switch on the light, but there was no current.

The shadow left the room. Was it the young woman whom he had released,
who had come? But why should she have come?

CHAPTER VIII

ON THE WAR-PATH

At four o'clock in the morning, the streets were almost empty. A few
fruit and vegetable-carts were making their way between the demolished
houses and the shattered pavements. But from a neighbouring avenue
there emerged a little cavalcade in which Simon immediately
recognized, at the head of the party, astride a monstrous big horse,
Old Sandstone, wearing his rusty top-hat, with the skirts of his black
frock-coat overflowing either side of a saddle with bulging
saddle-bags.

Next came Antonio, _alias_ Lynx-Eye, likewise mounted; then a third
horseman, perched like the others behind heavy saddle-bags; and lastly
three persons on foot, one of whom held the bridle of a fourth horse.
The three pedestrians had brick-red faces and long hair and were
dressed in the same style as Lynx-Eye, in soft leggings with leather
fringes, velveteen breeches, flannel girdles, wide-brimmed felt hats,
with gaudy ribbons: in short, a heterogeneous, picturesque band, with
many-coloured accoutrements, in which the adornments dear to circus
cow-boys were displayed side by side with those of one of Fenimore
Cooper's Redskins, or one of Gustave Aymard's scouts. They carried
rifles slung across their shoulders and revolvers and daggers in their
belts.

"What the deuce!" exclaimed Simon. "Why, this is a martial progress!
Are we going among savages?"

"We are going into a country," replied Antonio, gravely, "Where there
are no inhabitants, no inns, no victuals, but where there are already
visitors as dangerous as beasts of prey, which is why we have to carry
two days' provisions and two days' supply of oats and compressed
fodder for our mounts. This, then, is our escort. These are the
brothers Mazzani, the elder and the younger. This is Forsetta. Here is
Mr. Sandstone. Here, on horse