Anne-Hilarion looked up into his face, the fear in his eyes changed to an almost incredulous joy. "Oh, M. le Chevalier!" he exclaimed. Then he threw his arms round his friend's neck and held him very tight. "Oh, how glad I am! how good of you to come!" he whispered fervently. "But the—that other man in there?"
"He will not trouble us—not, at least, if we are quick. Get into your clothes, Anne, faster than you have ever done in your life. Can you get into them?" asked the Chouan a little doubtfully, setting the half-clothed figure down upon the bed, and looking round in the lamplight for more garments.
"Already it is many weeks since I can dress myself," announced the Comte de Flavigny proudly. "But this is my shirt that I have on. I have no nightshirt. He said it did not matter, but I have never before gone to bed in——"
"Never mind," said La Vireville, pitching a few garments on to the bed. They seemed to him ridiculously minute. "How does this go on?"
"That is the wrong way round!" observed Anne, so hilariously that the émigré glanced at the open door and put his finger to his lip. Evidently Anne's faith in him was so great that his mere presence was to him the equivalent of safety.
"Now wait here a moment in the dark," said La Vireville when, between them, a rapid toilet had been effected. "It is only for an instant." He returned with the lamp to the outer room, satisfied himself that Mme. de Chaulnes's emissary was still soundly unconscious under the counterpane, and, unlocking the door, stole out into the passage and listened. There was neither sound nor light anywhere. He went back to Anne-Hilarion.
And, five minutes later, by the simple expedient of letting themselves out of its back door, the Chevalier de la Vireville and his small charge found themselves free of the Hôtel du Faisan et de la Constitution, and standing, under the April stars, between high walls in an unsavoury back lane of Abbeville. It was not, indeed, a propitious hour for the walks abroad of a reputable citizen, still less for those of a boy of tender years, but there was now excellent reason why the open air should appeal strongly to them both. Wherefore La Vireville prayed that fate and the darkness should so favour him, that by six or seven o'clock he should find himself at the little port of St. Valéry-sur-Somme, thirteen miles or so down the river, and that there a still further indulgence of the gods would enable him to hire a boat to return across the Channel. For to go back to Boulogne or Calais would be madness, and the chief recommendation of St. Valéry, besides the fact of its being a harbour, was that it lay off all the main roads between those greater ports and Paris. Even then it would be hard enough to get a boat without exciting suspicion. But the Fates had been hitherto so kind that he must go on trusting them.
"I shall have to carry you most of the way, child, so I had best begin now," he whispered, and picked up his half-sleepy, half-excited charge.
CHAPTER IX
The Trois Frères of Caen
But Fortune, after whom Fortuné de la Vireville had been somewhat ironically named, had all his life taken away with one hand what she had given him with the other. So now she granted to him to get clear of the town of Abbeville, to find unmolested the way to St. Valéry, to meet thereon none to question or stay him, to arrive there a little before six, when the life of the small port was already bustling, to perceive, lounging on the quayside, a seafaring individual whose countenance seemed to promise accessibility to a bribe . . . and to overhear, at that very moment, a piece of news which made all attempt at bribing him useless. For it was quite clear, from a conversation going on, within easy earshot, between two master mariners, one of whom had evidently just come into harbour, that the greater part of the Brest squadron had come up in the night, and was even now cruising between Dieppe and Boulogne.