At last the end arrived. The breathing grew faster and faster and more laboured; it rattled more horribly in his chest; a spasm convulsed him, and he sank back exhausted, while from his face and throat which were all uncovered a heavy sweat poured. Then suddenly he raised himself to almost a sitting posture with his hands, and, with a rolling glance that seemed to take in all the hut, he sank back slowly again. Yet as he did so his lips moved, and a whisper came from them—a whisper that seemed to frame the words "De Roquemaure." A moment after he was dead.
"Tell me all you know," St. Georges said to the woman a few moments later. "How he came here, how he was set upon and done to death? I must ride on and on to-night, yet ere long, if I can compass it, I will return to Troyes and never leave it until I have found my child and know all. Tell me."
"He came here," she said, "five days ago—was brought here by me, for I saw him attacked and wounded to the death, as you know now. I was up there by—by him who swings upon that hellish gibbet; the dawn was at hand."
"The dawn," St. Georges whispered to himself. "The dawn of five days ago, when D'Arpajou's horse rode into the town. The day Dorine was lost."
"Then," the woman continued, "through the coming day I saw him advancing from the town upon this road, carrying a bundle under his arm."
"Ah!"
"Yet not so fast but that two others who had left the gate behind him came swifter than he. One, a man, young and supple, clad in the De Roquemaure russet—no need of that to tell me that devil had a hand in what was to be done; the other, a woman, all in sombre black, a mask upon her face."
"A woman in it!"
"Ho!" said the peasant, "doubt not! He has his women, too, at his beck and call. Easy enough to find one of the scourings of Troyes—perhaps an innocent girl once, before she knew him!—to do his bidding."