orld beyond St. Gaultier, and could not answer my question. I
was about to bid him show us the way down, when Maignan cried out that
he knew more.

'What?' I asked.

'Arnidieu! he heard them say where they were going to spend the night!'

'Ha!' I cried. 'Where?'

'In an old ruined castle two leagues from this, and between here and St.
Gaultier,' the equerry answered, forgetting in his triumph both plague
and panic. 'What do you say to that, your Excellency? It is so, sirrah,
is it not?' he continued, turning to the peasant. 'Speak, Master
Jacques, or I will roast you before a slow fire!'

But I did not wait to hear the answer. Leaping to the ground, I took the
Cid's rein on my arm, and cried impatiently to the man to lead us down.

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE CASTLE ON THE HILL.

The certainty that Bruhl and his captives were not far off, and the
likelihood that we might be engaged within the hour, expelled from the
minds of even the most timorous among us the vapourish fears which had
before haunted them. In the hurried scramble which presently landed us
on the bank of the stream, men who had ridden for hours in sulky
silence found their voices, and from cursing their horses' blunders soon
advanced to swearing and singing after the fashion of their kind. This
change, by relieving me of a great fear, left me at leisure to consider
our position, and estimate more clearly than I might have done the
advantages of hastening, or postponing, an attack. We numbered eleven;
the enemy, to the best of my belief, twelve. Of this slight superiority
I should have reeked little in the daytime; nor, perhaps, counting
Maignan as two, have allowed that it existed. But the result of a
night attack is more difficult to forecast; and I had also to take into
account the perils to which the two ladies would be exposed, between the
darkness and tumult, in the event of the issue remaining for a time in
doubt.

These considerations, and particularly the last, weighed so powerfully
with me, that before I reached the bottom of the gorge I had decided to
postpone the attack until morning. The answers to some questions which
I put to the inhabitant of the house by the ford as soon as I reached
level ground only confirmed me in this resolution. The road Bruhl had
taken ran for a distance by the riverside, and along the bottom of
the gorge; and, difficult by day, was reported to be impracticable for
horses by night. The castle he had mentioned l