“Yes,” said Leoni, looking at him fixedly, and with a smile upon his lips, “and I give you good counsel. It must be so. Hah!” he whispered harshly, as he caught the boy by the breast. “Hark!”
He loosed his hold, stepped lightly as a cat to the window, and peered through a tiny opening in the partly fastened window-shutter, to make out dimly a little crowd of horses and men in the cloudy night.
But his ears made up for the want of penetration of his eyes, for just then a sharp order rang out and the horses, which had been taking their turns to lower their muzzles to the water in the long trough in front of the inn, raised them, dripping, and a couple of minutes later the troop was in motion again, with the hoofs of the chargers rattling and gradually dying out upon the road.
Denis was in the act of drawing a long deep breath of relief, hardly believing that they had escaped, when their host appeared at the door.
“The King’s men, gentlemen,” he said, “from Windsor; but it was only to give their horses water,” he added sadly. “They would not come in to drink, and I expect,” he continued dolefully, “when I go to look I shall find the trough empty, and an hour’s work before me to fill it from the well. But they are the King’s men, gentlemen; any other travellers would have paid, as you do, gentlemen, generously and well.”
“Let me pay, then, for this,” cried Denis, light-hearted as he was at the thoughts of their escape, and he slipped a broad piece of silver into the man’s hand, sending him on his way rejoicing.
That night Denis dropped into a deep but at the same time a thoroughly uneasy sleep, in which at times it seemed to him that he was being pursued, at others that he was the pursuer, while people were constantly getting into his way, shouting out lustily, “You cannot pass!” He was in terrible anxiety too about his master, who was just ahead, urging on his horse, not apparently along an ordinary respectable country road, but through what seemed to be absolutely interminable galleries of a palace. He wanted to tell him to turn either to the right or to the left, and by that means escape from what appeared to be a labyrinth; but unluckily he could not get his horse abreast of that of his master, and the wind was blowing so hard that his voice would not carry. He was just about to shout “France! France!” when he woke up, with the perspiration standing on his brow and the conviction full upon him as he reached for his cloak and sword that real danger did threaten his lord, when Leoni seized his arm.
“Come, boy,” he said, and he led him into the room where Francis and Saint Simon were talking.
And then sounds below caught the boy’s ear, the trampling of horses and the burr, burr, of deep-toned voices, one of which said angrily:
“We had traces of the fugitives up to this place. Did they come here?”