"But those accursed Trévargans——" said the préfet.
"Their punishment will not long be delayed. I sent a copy of the compromising letter to the Minister—the original is still in my keeping."
CHAPTER IX
THE LAST ADVENTURE
I
The riders put their horses to a walk. It was getting late in the afternoon, and the sun, crimson and cheerless, was setting in a sea of slate-coloured mist. A blustering wind from the south-west blew intermittent rain showers into the faces of the two solitary wayfarers. They had ridden hard all day—a matter of over thirty miles from Evreux—and one of them, at any rate, a middle-aged, stoutish, official-looking personage, showed signs both of fatigue and of growing ill-temper. The other, younger, more slender, dressed in colourless grey from head to foot, his mantle slung lightly from his shoulders, his keen eyes fixed straight before him, appeared moved by impatience rather than by the wind or the lateness of the hour.
The rain and the rapidly falling dusk covered the distant hills and the valley beyond with a mantle of gloom. To right and left of the road the coppice, still dressed in winter garb, already was wrapped in the mysteries of the night.
"I shall not be sorry to see the lights of Mantes," said M. Gault, the commissary of police of Evreux, to his companion. "I am getting saddle-sore, and this abominable damp has got into my bones."
The other sighed with obvious impatience.
"I would like to push on to Paris to-night," he said. "The moon will be up directly, and I believe the rain-clouds will clear. In any case the night will not be very dark, and I know every inch of the way."