He hastened to his room, placed the signal in the window so that Valentine might know he was coming, and waited for an answering light.
“Come, M. Gaston,” entreated old St. Jean, who could not understand the strange conduct. “For God’s sake make haste! your life is at stake!”
At last he came running down the stairs, and had just reached the vestibule when a pistol-shot, the signal given by the marquis, was heard.
The loud swinging open of the large gate, the rattling of the sabres of the gendarmes, the furious galloping of many horses, and a chorus of loud shouts and angry oaths, were next heard.
Leaning against the window, his brow beaded with cold perspiration, the Marquis de Clameran breathlessly awaited the issue of this expedient, upon which depended the life of his eldest son.
His measures were excellent, and deserved success. As he had ordered, Louis and La Verdure dashed out through the gate, one to the right, the other to the left, each one pursued by a dozen mounted men. Their horses flew like arrows, and kept far ahead of the pursuers.
Gaston would have been saved, but for the interference of fate; but was it fate, or was it malice?
Suddenly Louis’s horse stumbled, and fell to the ground with his rider. The gendarmes rode up, and at once recognized the second son of M. de Clameran.
“This is not the assassin!” they cried. “Let us hurry back, else he will escape!”
They returned just in time to see, by the uncertain light of the moon peeping from behind a cloud, Gaston climbing the garden wall.