He was armed now to the fullest extent possible; his great sword of course by his side, his "back-and-breast" on, a pistol in his belt. He knew the undertaking he was upon was full of danger, and that, from the moment he entered the estate of Bois-le-Vaux, he would be in direst peril. For that De Bois-Vallée would cause him to be slain without giving him any opportunity of defence, and without meeting him in fair fight, he never doubted; nay, he felt very sure that, if the chance came in his enemy's way, he would slay him treacherously, wherever they might meet. How much more certain then his fate if he should be caught on the villain's own land, and with the villain's own creatures to do his bidding!
But such reflections as these troubled him not a jot, and when, on rising the summit of the Little Pass, he saw Remiremont lying under the clear rays of the moon, which had now freed herself from the mists below, he gave his horse rein and rode on swiftly to the town.
The town from which a road branched off that, a little further, would bring him beneath the mountains, and to the spot where the woman was whom he had vowed to rescue.
[CHAPTER XVIII.]
THE SLEEPERS
An hour later and Andrew Vause was slowly making his way through a deep wood of chestnuts that fringed the property of De Bois-Vallée, and which lay between the open place in front of the mansion and the side road along which he had come from the southern entrance to Remiremont.
From the beginning, from the moment he knew he was outside Bois-le-Vaux, he had been forced to recognize that no chances were omitted for rendering the property what it was, and what it had in all probability been since first constructed in the time of Duke Thierry, namely, a strongly guarded and protected place. Inside the road, between the chestnut wood and the road itself, ran a high stone wall--the mountains above providing the stones for that as well as for the house itself--which was two feet above Andrew's tall head, and which at first presented the appearance of being insurmountable. Yet this was not the case, as very shortly the adventurous soldier proved.
Having tied his horse to a tree, he, from its back, soon clambered on to the summit of the wall, and then (since, inside, the copse of chestnuts grew close up to it) lowered himself by a branch to the ground. He stood, therefore, within the place which held his enemy and the woman whom that enemy kept prisoner, as he believed.
But, because he was a wary adventurer who knew that now his life hung by the veriest thread if discovered, he lost no opportunity of making himself safe, and no sooner was he within the place than he took steps to provide for his exit.
"It may come to a rush for escape," he thought, "to the necessity for reaching the horse's back the moment I am on the wall--let's see for a mark to guide me," whereon he paused and looked around for something that should give him a clue to the exact spot where he had left the steed. He was not long in finding one.