nk, and no more. I felt myself borne along by an irresistible
current, whither and for what purpose I could not tell; an experience to
an extent strange at my age the influence of the night and the weather.
Twice we stood aside to let a party of roisterers go by, and the
excessive care M. de Rambouillet evinced on these occasions to avoid
recognition did not tend to reassure me or make me think more lightly of
the unknown business on which I was bound.

Reaching at last an open space, our leader bade us in a low voice be
careful and follow him closely. We did so and crossed in this way and in
single file a narrow plank or wooden bridge; but whether water ran below
or a dry ditch only, I could not determine. My mind was taken up at the
moment with the discovery which I had just made, that the dark building,
looming huge and black before us with a single light twinkling here and
there at great heights, was the Castle of Blois.

CHAPTER XV. VILAIN HERODES.

All the distaste and misliking I had expressed earlier in the day for
the Court of Blois recurred with fresh force in the darkness and gloom;
and though, booted and travel-stained as we were, I did not conceive it
likely that we should be obtruded on the circle about the king, I felt
none the less an oppressive desire to be through with our adventure, and
away from the ill-omened precincts in which I found myself. The darkness
prevented me seeing the faces of my companions; but on M. de Rosny, who
was not quite free himself, I think, from the influences of the time
and place, twitching my sleeve to enforce vigilance, I noted that the
lackeys had ceased to follow us, and that we three were beginning
to ascend a rough staircase cut in the rock. I gathered, though the
darkness limited my view behind as well as in front to a few twinkling
lights, that we were mounting the scarp from the moat; to the side wall
of the castle; and I was not surprised when the marquis muttered to us
to stop, and knocked softly on the wood of a door.

M. de Rosny might have spared the touch he had laid on my sleeve, for by
this time I was fully and painfully sensible of the critical position in
which we stood, and was very little likely to commit an indiscretion. I
trusted he had not done so already! No doubt--it flashed across me while
we waited--he had taken care to safeguard himself. But how often, I
reflected, had all safeguards been set aside and all precautions eluded
by those to wh