"You see?" Martin said as he watched them. "Be calm. They can do you no harm."
And he leaned over the bridge again and continued to observe the oncomers.
Ahead of the main body, consisting of some hundred of cavalry and an even larger number of Languedoc milice or train bands, there rode three men abreast. In the middle was one clad in a sober riding dress of dark gray; the others on either side of him were rich in scarlet coats much guarded with galloon, the evening sun flickering on the lace and causing it to sparkle like burnished gold, and with large laced three-cornered hats in which also their gold cockades shone, while he on the left wore the rich justaucorps à brevet, a sure sign not of a soldier of France alone, but of a soldier of high social rank and standing.
"He in the middle," said Buscarlet, "is Baville, the Scourge of the Scourge. Be sure that when he comes with the soldiery the worst is to be dreaded. That he deems his presence is necessary to insure fitting vengeance being taken."
"Fear not," said Martin. "They can not execute us here to-night; afterward, inquiry will show that we have done nothing to deserve their vengeance. Be calm."
Amid clouds of dust from the road on which no rain had fallen for many days the cavalcade came onward, reaching at last the farther end of the bridge from where these two men stood side by side; then the officer on the right gave the orders for all following to halt, and slowly he with the other two rode on to the bridge itself and up the slope to where Buscarlet and Martin stood.
"It is the Lieutenant General, de Peyre," Buscarlet whispered. "The other is the Marquis du Chaila, the dead man's nephew. O God! what a sight for him to see!"
"What has been done here?" said Baville, looking down at the two men on foot who stood close by where they had halted their horses, though not until he and his companions had turned their eyes to the burned house, from which little spiral wreaths of smoke rose vertically in the calm evening air. "What? And who, messieurs, are you?"
The quiet tones of his full rich voice, the absence of all harshness in it, almost startled Martin Ashurst. Was this the man, he wondered--or could the pastor have been mistaken?--of whose cruelty to the Protestants as well as his fierce and overbearing nature not only all the province rang, but also other parts of the land far remote from here? The man whose name was known and mentioned with loathing by the refugees in Holland and Switzerland, in Canterbury and Spitalfields?
"Who are you, messieurs?" he repeated quietly, "though I think I should know you, at least," and he directed his glance to the pastor. "Monsieur André Buscarlet, prédicateur of the--the--so-called Reformed Religion, if I am not mistaken."