SIR PERCY HITS BACK.
custom, went through to the boudoir. Mathieu had opened the door for them. And now he came to think of it, the ladies had each kissed Monsieur very tenderly before they went out of the room. Yes! the kiss had seemed like a farewell. Mathieu shook his head dolefully: he remembered it now, but hadn't thought anything about it at the moment. Monsieur certainly appeared more thoughtful. Usually, while he drank his last glass of wine and Mathieu was engaged in washing the silver in the large copper bowl which he always brought into the room for that purpose, Monsieur would chat with him, talk over the gossip of the day. But to-night he had been unusually silent. Yes! Mathieu now remembered quite distinctly about the kiss, and about Monsieur being so silent. But he certainly had noticed nothing else unusual, until the moment when those brigands banged at the door and demanded admittance in the name of their godless Republic.
Mathieu was on the stairs at that moment, so he did not know how Monsieur had looked when he heard all the tramping and the noise. But Madame and Mademoiselle were gone, of that there could be no doubt. The brigands had searched for them, like so many dogs digging for a bone, and not a trace was there of the two ladies, for the bon Dieu, no doubt, had made them invisible.
Of old Mathieu and the staff, the officer in command took no notice, after he had summarily ordered them to muster up in the hall; he counted up the indoor-servants and the farm-hands; those who had their homes outside the precincts of the château, he ordered roughly out of the place.
"Get back to your homes!" he had said to them, after he had inspected and questioned them; "and stay there quietly, if you value your lives."
So there were only half a dozen old men, the four girls and the staff's cook left in the château. All of them were scared, and as Mam'zelle Fleurette could see, they just stood about and talked and talked while the girls did nothing but cry. He — Mathieu — could do nothing with any of them. The work of the house ought to be carried on; none of them had had any supper yet. But there! young and old, they were, all of them, too much upset to work or to eat; and the tramp-tramp-tramp, upstairs and downstairs was nerve-shattering to everybody.
Fleurette listened to the amazing story until the end. As Mathieu said, there was the ceaseless tramping of feet still going on. They — those horrible soldiers of the Republic, unworthy to be called Frenchmen — were still searching for Madame and Mademoiselle in order to drag them to Orange where the awful guillotine had been at work these months past; or perhaps even to Paris — that den of horrors beside which the stories of demons and ogres were but trivial tales.
Madame and Mademoiselle! who never in their lives had done any harm to anyone: but rather spent every hour of the day planning and executing kind deeds! And Mademoiselle! so delicate and frail that even her father, who idolized her, hardly dared touch her. And now these men, these rough and uncouth soldiers, with their harsh voices and bullying ways, to think of their approaching Mademoiselle, pushing her, dragging her, it made Fleurette's blood boil even to think of such a possibility. No wonder that the bon Dieu had made them invisible to the eyes of all those bandits.
Tramp! tramp! tramp! and now a loud banging as if pieces of furniture, chairs, tables were being overturned, and then a crash, as of broken china!
"Holy Virgin!" Papa Mathieu exclaimed with a loud groan; "to think of Madame's beautiful things! Those brigands are furious at not finding Madame and Mademoiselle, and are venting their wrath on inanimate things."
It was these words of old Mathieu that sent Fleurette's thoughts flying in another direction — back to the early afternoon of this memorable day — back to the first visit of these awful soldiers, and to the faggot-carrier with his bundle tied up in sacking. From thence to the voice! The mysterious voice that had told her where valuables and papers were to be found. It was such a flash of recollection that her whole face became transfigured; anxiety and superstitious awe gave place to that same fervour which had animated her when she met the eyes of the faggot-carrier: eyes that conveyed a message, which at last she was beginning to understand.
"Papa!" she cried impulsively.
"Yes, Mam'zelle?" Mathieu asked with another sigh.
"Did anything else happen? — I mean anything unusual? — Did Madame — or Monsieur — receive a letter? a message? or — or did any other stranger come to the château this afternoon?"
"Oh think, Papa Mathieu, think," she implored with tears of agitation choking her voice. "I cannot tell you how important it is. Try to remember — was there anything? — anybody? —— "
Papa persistently shook his head, until Pierre, who was the gate-keeper, reminded him that Monsieur had gone down the avenue as far as the gate, just ten minutes before dinner was served.
"There's nothing very unusual in that," Mathieu retorted. "Monsieur is often out just before dinner is served."
"Yes!" Pierre insisted. "But what did he do this evening? He walked straight to the gate, which I had closed half an hour before. I saw him. He walked straight to the gate, he did, and you know the old acacia tree just the other side? Well! Monsieur put his foot on a bar of the gate and reached over to the forked branch of the old tree. I saw him quite plainly, I tell you. And when he walked back to the house he had a piece of paper in his hand with some writing on it, which he was reading. And I think, papa," Pierre concluded triumphantly, "you'll have to admit that there was something unusual in that."
But Mathieu, with the obstinacy of old age and long service, would not admit it, even now.
"Monsieur," he said, "met the mail-carrier at the gate, he often comes at this hour. He gave Monsieur a letter. Monsieur often gets letters —— "
But here André interposed. Old André — they were all of them old — worked in the stables, and it was he who had taken the two horses from the soldiers when ordered to do so, and walked them round to the stables. It was then that he noticed two beggars hanging about in the yard: a man and a woman. He had peremptorily ordered them off the premises.
"Beggars!" Fleurette exclaimed eagerly. "What were they like?"
André said that as the sun was in his eyes he couldn't see them very well. There was a man and a woman. He was busy with the horses and upset by the arrival of all these brigands. The woman he couldn't see at all because of the shawl which covered her head, but he recollected that the man was a big fellow, bent nearly double under a huge bundle tied up in sacking.
"When I spoke to him," André went on, "he mumbled something or other, but I just told him to clear out, he and his woman; we'd enough of vagabonds, I said, in the place with all these soldiers."
"And did he go?" Fleurette asked.
"Yes. I must admit that he went off quite quietly after that. I did not think he meant any evil, because when he first caught sight of me he did not attempt to hide or to run away."
"If he had," André went on after a moment or two, "I would have been after him pretty quickly, and wanted to know what was in that big bundle."
He paused, a look of perplexity and of shamefacedness came over his wrinkled old face while he thoughtfully scratched his head: "Now I think of it," he said, "I ought to have inspected that bundle. It looked mighty heavy for faggots or for rags. Perhaps he had been up to no good after all —— And directly after I lost sight of him and his woman I saw a whole lot of faggots lying in a heap close by the stable door."
The other old men and the maids had gathered closer round André and Fleurette. This was the first they had heard of the old vagabond and his woman, and the bundle which appeared so heavy.
"You certainly ought to have inspected that bundle, André," Mathieu said sententiously. He felt that there was a chance of recapturing his dignity which seemed to have been slightly impaired through his argument with Pierre. He could re-assert his authority at any rate by rebuking André. "It looks," he went on, "as if the old vagabond had brought a lot of faggots with him, then turned them out of the sacking and replaced them by God knows what valuables he may have stolen."
"I was so upset, you understand, papa!" André murmured ruefully.
"We were all of us upset, as you call it, André," papa