“En avant!”
Marguerite could but strain her ears to listen. All her senses, all her faculties had merged into that of hearing, rendering it doubly keen. It seemed to her that she could distinguish the faint sound—that even as she listened grew fainter and fainter yet—of Chauvelin and his squad moving away rapidly into the thickness of the wood some distance already ahead.
Close to her there was the snorting of horses, the clanging and noise of moving mounted men. Heron’s coach had taken the lead; she could hear the creaking of its wheels, the calls of the driver urging his beasts.
The diminished party was moving at foot-pace in the darkness that seemed to grow denser at every step, and through that silence which was so full of mysterious sounds.
The carriage rolled and rocked on its springs; Marguerite, giddy and overtired, lay back with closed eyes, her hand resting in that of Armand. Time, space and distance had ceased to be; only Death, the great Lord of all, had remained; he walked on ahead, scythe on skeleton shoulder, and beckoned patiently, but with a sure, grim hand.
There was another halt, the coach-wheels groaned and creaked on their axles, one or two horses reared with the sudden drawing up of the curb.
“What is it now?” came Heron’s hoarse voice through the darkness.
“It is pitch-dark, citizen,” was the response from ahead. “The drivers cannot see their horses’ ears. They wait to know if they may light their lanthorns and then lead their horses.”
“They can lead their horses,” replied Heron roughly, “but I’ll have no lanthorns lighted. We don’t know what fools may be lurking behind trees, hoping to put a bullet through my head—or yours, sergeant—we don’t want to make a lighted target of ourselves—what? But let the drivers lead their horses, and one or two of you who are riding greys might dismount too and lead the way—the greys would show up perhaps in this cursed blackness.”
While his orders were being carried out, he called out once more: