wherever you may try and hide yourself, I can find you, and that punishment swift, sure and terrible, will sooner or later overtake you. Do you hear me?”

“But your Excellency…”

“I said, do you hear me?”

The soldiers had all crept away; the three men stood alone together in the dark and lonely road, with Marguerite

there, behind the hedge, listening to Chauvelin’s orders, as she would to her own death sentence.

“I heard your Honour,” protested the Jew again, while he tried to draw nearer to Chauvelin, “and I swear by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that I would obey your Honour most absolutely, and that I would not move from this place until your Honour once more deigned to shed the light of your countenance upon your humble servant; but remember, your Honour, I am a poor old man; my nerves are not as strong as those of a young soldier. If midnight marauders should come prowling round this lonely road, I might scream or run in my fright! And is my life to be forfeit, is some terrible punishment to come on my poor old head for that which I cannot help?”

The Jew seemed in real distress; he was shaking from head to foot. Clearly he was not the man to be left by himself on this lonely road. The man spoke truly; he might unwittingly, in sheer terror, utter the shriek that might prove a warning to the wily Scarlet Pimpernel.

Chauvelin reflected for a moment.

“Will your horse and cart be safe alone, here, do you think?” he asked roughly.

“I fancy, citoyen,” here interposed Desgas, “that they will be safer without that dirty, cowardly Jew than with him. There seems no doubt that, if he gets scared, he will either make a bolt of it, or shriek his head off.”

“But what am I to do with the brute?”

“Will you send him back to Calais, citoyen?”

“No, for we shall want him to drive back the wounded presently,” said Chauvelin, with grim significance.

There was a pause again—Desgas waiting for the decision of his chief, and the old Jew whining beside his nag.

“Well, you lazy, lumbering old coward,” said Chauvelin at last, “you had better shuffle along behind us. Here, Citoyen Desgas, tie this handkerchief tightly round the fellow’s mouth.”

Chauvelin handed a scarf to Desgas, who solemnly began winding it round the Jew’s mouth. Meekly Benjamin Rosenbaum allowed himself to be gagged; he, evidently,

preferred this uncomfortable state to that of being left alone, on the dark St. Martin Road. Then the three men fell in line.

“Quick!” said Chauvelin, impatiently, “we have already wasted much valuable time.”

And the firm footsteps of Chauvelin and Desgas, the shuffling gait of the old Jew, soon died away along the footpath.