afternoon calls."

"Doctor Renard's house is only three minutes off," said the Colonel.

"Our danger," said Dr. Bull, "is not two minutes off."

"Yes," said Syme, "if we ride on fast we must leave them behind, for
they are on foot."

"He has a motor-car," said the Colonel.

"But we may not get it," said Bull.

"Yes, he is quite on your side."

"But he might be out."

"Hold your tongue," said Syme suddenly. "What is that noise?"

For a second they all sat as still as equestrian statues, and for
a second--for two or three or four seconds--heaven and earth seemed
equally still. Then all their ears, in an agony of attention, heard
along the road that indescribable thrill and throb that means only one
thing--horses!

The Colonel's face had an instantaneous change, as if lightning had
struck it, and yet left it scatheless.

"They have done us," he said, with brief military irony. "Prepare to
receive cavalry!"

"Where can they have got the horses?" asked Syme, as he mechanically
urged his steed to a canter.

The Colonel was silent for a little, then he said in a strained voice--

"I was speaking with strict accuracy when I said that the 'Soleil d'Or'
was the only place where one can get horses within twenty miles."

"No!" said Syme violently, "I don't believe he'd do it. Not with all
that white hair."

"He may have been forced," said the Colonel gently. "They must be at
least a hundred strong, for which reason we are all going to see my
friend Renard, who has a motor-car."

With these words he swung his horse suddenly round a street corner, and
went down the street with such thundering speed, that the others, though
already well at the gallop, had difficulty in following the flying tail
of his horse.

Dr. Renard inhabited a high and comfortable house at the top of a steep
street, so that when the riders alighted at his door they could once
more see the solid green ridge of the hill, with the white road across
it, standing up above all the roofs of the town. They breathed again to
see that the road as yet was clear, and they rang the bell.

Dr. Renard was a beaming, brown-bearded man, a good example of that
silent but very busy professional class which France has preserved even
more perfectly than England. When the matter was explained to him he
pooh-poohed the panic of the ex-Marquis altogether; he said, with the
solid French scepticism, that there was no conceivable probability of a
general anarchist