He stumbled and nearly fell in the white sandy dust, got up again with a shriek, and then, in a last, frenzied hope, plunged into the copse which he had now reached. And the awful horseman passed on—could that dust, the poor wretch wondered, have hidden him from his view?—a moment or two more and he knew that he was safe. The clatter of the hoofs on the road grew fainter and fainter; when at last he dared to peer from the edge of the little wood, the Englishman had disappeared.
For a couple of hours St. Georges urged the poor roadster to its best speed, then slackened rein as the wayside track reached the bay of Charenton. He was safe now from any recognition—or rather exposure—the army of Bellefonds and all who might by chance have got ashore from the destroyed fleet were far behind.
Yet he had been exposed to risks, too, on that ride. Once, near the auberge he had fled from, a farmer riding along called to him to stop, yelling at him to know why he was riding Dubois's horse; but his presence of mind did not fail him, and he called back: "Ride on and see! The French are defeated, the English have burned Barfleur and destroyed La Hogue!" and ere the man, whose terror-stricken face he long remembered, could speak again, he was far away from him.
Also he more than once passed deserters from the army—men who no sooner saw another in a uniform riding as though for life, than they fled away into woods and copses or over fields, imagining that he was in pursuit of them. And, once, he again come in contact with two together whose faces he thought he remembered as he leaped on board a French man-of-war the evening before—men who looked up at him with startled faces and oaths upon their lips—did they recognise him as he dashed by them?
But at last he had outdistanced all who might have escaped from La Hogue; his way lay along a sandy sea-blown road, at the sides of which were fields of millet, sanfoin, and sometimes, though not often, wheat. And ahead of him, against the bright May sky, he saw the tower and two high spire steeples of the ancient cathedral of Sainte Marie at Bayeux.
He eased his horse at a pool of fresh water, descended from it and removed the coarse saddle, and, while it drank eagerly, rubbed its sides and back.
"Good horse!" he said.—"good horse! I have been a hard taskmaster and a stranger to you to-day. Heaven knows I would not have urged you thus but for my necessity. And you have served me bravely, all rough bred as you are. Well, we will not part now, and some day, may be, I can find out your owner—that Dubois the farmer spoke of—and repay him for the friend I stole from him."
And he sat down by the animal's side for half an hour, and then, walking with the reins in his hand and carrying the saddle to ease it, he followed the road toward Bayeux.
It was the road, too, to Troyes and Aurélie de Roquemaure, the woman who had to answer to him for the theft of his child, and also for her duplicity when they had met in Paris!