Part 53 (2/2)

We will proceed to Calais first and open up communication with the Day-Dream in the usual way The others had best embark on board her, and the skipper shall then make for the known spot of Le Portel, of which Percy speaks in his letter I o by land to Le Portel, and thence, if I have no news of you or of the expedition, I will sloork southwards in the direction of the Chateau d'Ourde That is all that I can do If you can contrive to let Percy or even Armand knowright, for, in a way, I shall be watching over you and arranging for your safety, as Blakeney begged me to do God bless you, Lady Blakeney, and God save the Scarlet Pimpernel!”

He stooped and kissed her hand, and she intimated to the officer that she was ready He had a hackney coach waiting for her lower down the street To it she walked with a firm step, and as she entered it she waved a last farewell to Sir Andrew Ffoulkes

CHAPTER XLII THE GUARD-HOUSE OF THE RUE STE ANNE

The little cortege was turning out of the great gates of the house of Justice It was intensely cold; a bitter north-easterly gale was blowing fro sleet and snow and half-frozen rain into the faces of theits way up their sleeves, down their collars and round the knees of their threadbare breeches

Arers were numb with the cold, could scarcely feel the reins in his hands Chauvelin was riding close beside hied one word since the moment when the small troop of some twenty mounted soldiers had filed up inside the courtyard, and Chauvelin, with a curt word of command, had ordered one of the troopers to take Arht up the rear of the cortege, with aat a distance of twenty paces

Heron's gaunt, ugly face, croith a battered, sugar-loaf hat, appeared from time to time at theof the coach He was no horseman, and, moreover, preferred to keep the prisoner closely under his own eye The corporal had told Armand that the prisoner ith citizen Heron inside the coach--in irons Beyond that the soldiers could tell hi of the object of this expedition

Vaguely they ht have wondered in their dullescorted out of the Conciergerie prison with so much paraphernalia and such an air of mystery, when there were thousands of prisoners in the city and the provinces at the present moment who anon would be bundled up wholesale into carts to be dragged to the guillotine like a flock of sheep to the butchers

But even if they wondered theythemselves

Their faces, blue with the cold, were the perfect mirrors of their own unconquerable stolidity

The tower clock of Notre Dame struck seven when the sates In the east the wan light of a February looainst the dull grey sky, and down below, on the right, the frozen river, like a sraceful curves round the islands and past the facade of the Louvres palace, whose walls looked griiants of the past

All around the great city gave signs of awakening; the business of the day renewed its course every twenty-four hours, despite the tragedies of death and of dishonour that walked with it hand in hand From the Place de La Revolution the intermittent roll of dru the ear of the passer-by Along the quay opposite an open-air caed in the great task of clothing and feeding the people of France, ar to their task, even before the wintry dawn had spread its pale grey tints over the narrower streets of the city

Armand shi+vered under his cloak This silent ride beneath the laden sky, through the veil of half-frozen rain and snow, seemed like a dream to him And now, as the outriders of the little cavalcade turned to cross the Pont au Change, he saw spread out on his left what appeared like the living panoraone by He could see the house of the Rue St Gered before he carried through the rescue of the little Dauphin Armand could even see the hich the drea noble drea had turned into realities, until the hand of a traitor had brought him down to--to what? Armand would not have dared at this ar hackney coach wherein that proud, reckless adventurer, who had defied Fate and mocked Death, sat, in chains, beside a loathsoe

Now they were passing under the very house on the Quai de La Ferraille, above the saddler's shop, the house where Marguerite had lodged ten days ago, whither Ar to fool himself into the belief that the love of ”little ainst his own crime He had tried to draw a veil before those eyes which he had scarcely dared encounter, but he knew that that veil must lift one day, and then a curse would send him forth, outlawed and homeless, a wanderer on the face of the earth

Soon as the little cortege wended its way northwards it filed out beneath the walls of the Te at attention, there the archith the guichet of the concierge, and beyond it the paved courtyard Armand closed his eyes deliberately; he could not bear to look

No wonder that he shi+vered and tried to draw his cloak closer around him Every stone, every street corner was full of memories The chill that struck to the very marrow of his bones came from no outward cause; it was the very hand of remorse that, as it passed over him, froze the blood in his veins and made the rattle of those wheels behind him sound like a hellish knell

At last the more closely populated quarters of the city were left behind On ahead the first section of the guard had turned into the Rue St Anne The houses became ues, or sarden

Then a halt was called

It was quite light now As light as it would ever be beneath this leaden sky Rain and snow still fell in gusts, driven by the blast

Some one ordered Armand to dismount It was probably Chauvelin He did as he was told, and a trooper led hi that stood isolated on the right, extended on either side by a loall, and surrounded by a patch of uncultivated land, which now looked like a sea of mud

On ahead was the line of fortifications direy of the sky, and in between brown, sodden earth, with here and there a detached house, a cabbage patch, a couple of windmills deserted and desolate

The loneliness of an unpopulated outlying quarter of the great mother city, a useless limb of her active body, an ostracised member of her vast family

Mechanically Ar Here Chauvelin was standing, and bade hi in the dark narrow passage in front Chauvelin led the way to a room on the left

Still that smell of hot coffee Ever after it was associated in Aruard-house of the Rue Ste Anne, when the rain and snow beat against the s, and he stood there in the low guard-roo and half-numbed with cold