"Thank God this awful time is over!" she said. "It is to your brother we owe it that we are not, both, now in that terrible prison.
"Leigh is good at breaking prison," Patsey said. "He rescued me from the gaol at Nantes."
By this time her husband and Leigh had taken their places. Louis, still soundly asleep, was transferred to his mother's lap; and the carriage, turning, went back at the full speed of the horses.
[Chapter 18]: Home.
"Why did you come down the road?" Leigh asked Monsieur Flambard, as the carriage flew past the little inn. "We had not arranged for that, and in the dark we might have passed it without knowing that it was yours."
"We were on the lookout for you, and had no fear of missing you. I decided to drive back to the town as we went out. I believe the innkeeper to be an honest fellow, and he has been one of our customers for a number of years; but I thought it just as well to throw dust in his eyes. Therefore, as I got into the carriage, I said in his hearing:
"'Don't go through the main streets of the town, but drive round and strike the road beyond it. Keep on to Langon. We shall stop there tonight.'
"We drove off fast, and only broke into a walk just before you met us. The innkeeper would have gone into the house again, before we met; and as I noticed that the shutters were up, he certainly would not have supposed that the vehicle which passed was our carriage, coming back again.
"Well, thank God we are all safe and together! In three hours we shall be at the village. Lefaux was to keep a boat ashore, and to be himself at the inn. There is only one in the village."
The road was a good one, and the horses fast, and in less than an hour and a half they reached the spot where the relay of horses had been stationed. Five minutes sufficed to make the change and, in a little under three hours after starting, they arrived at the village two miles below Fort Medoc. They stopped at the first house.