The farmer and his follower drive in and mix with the crowd on the inside of the barrier. At this stage the farmer disappears from our history. But the face of the youth is noted by an eagle eye and recognized by a brain that does not forget!
The prowling Judge sees the Chevalier, though the Chevalier does not see him.
“Follow that man!” he says quietly to his deputies. “We shall catch him red-handed in some plot!”
Our little heroine had lived quietly for many months in the faubourg lodgings to which, perforce, she had to return after her vain visit to the Frochard cellar and her rough handling by the Carmognole rioters. The little sparrow of a seamstress was quite undisturbed by the great events of the French Revolution, except as they had put everything at sixes and sevens and whirled away her own intimates in the mad whirligig.
The pock-marked man (whom she had sheltered overnight in this very place) was the Savior of the Country; the prying lodger Robespierre was the Chief of State. Of course she never saw them now, her small self would hardly dare address them! Sister Genevieve and the Doctor, who had told her about the Frochards’ den, were no longer within her ken.
The weary months had dragged along. Notwithstanding the cheering message conveyed by Picard, her knight the Chevalier––so far as she knew––was still a prisoner 145 of Caen. And the weary months had dragged their ball and chain of silence and despair still more wearingly in the failure of her many renewed attempts to find Louise. The blind sister was again swallowed up in the devouring city––the Frochards were fled.
Whither was Henriette to look––whither to turn?
A ray of light from the window glinted on the holy Book of books that the girl treasured. She opened it. A line read at random comforted her. Clasping the volume in her hands, she knelt in prayer, addressing God softly: