"However, I am tracing the wicked
fugitives; I am on their track" (and the handsome
effeminate face looked as ferocious as any
demon's). " They will not escape me; but every
minute is a minute of misery to me, till I meet
my wife. Madame has sympathy, has she
not?"

He drew his face into a hard, unnatural smile,
and then both went out to the forge, as if once
more to hasten the blacksmith over his work.

Amante stopped her whistling for one instant.

"Go on as you are, without change of an
eyelid even; in a few minutes he will be gone,
and it will be over!"

It was a necessary caution, for I was on the
point of giving way, and throwing myself
weakly upon her neck. We went on; she
whistling and stitching, I making semblance to
sew. And it was well we did so; for almost
directly he came back for his whip, which he
had laid down and forgotten; and again I felt
one of those sharp, quick-scanning glances, sent
all round the room, and taking in all.

Then we heard him ride away; and then, it
had been long too dark to see well, I dropped
my work, and gave way to my trembling and
shuddering. The blacksmith's wife returned.
She was a good creature. Amante told her I
was cold and weary, and she insisted on my
stopping my work, and going to sit near the
stove; hastening at the same time her preparations
for supper, which in honour of us, and of
monsieur's liberal payment, was to be a little
less frugal than ordinary. It was well for me
that she made me taste a little of the cider-soup
she was preparing, or I could not have held up,
in spite of Amante's warning look, and the
remembrance of her frequent exhortations to act
resolutely up to the characters we had assumed,
whatever befel. To cover my agitation Amante
stopped her whistling, and began to talk; and
by the time the blacksmith came in she and the
good woman of the house were in full flow. He
began at once upon the handsome gentleman
who had paid him so well; all his sympathy
was with him, and both he and his wife only
wished he might overtake his wicked wife, and
punish her as she deserved. And then the
conversation took a turn, not uncommon to those
whose lives are quiet and mononotous; every
one seemed to vie with each other in telling
about some horror; and the savage and
mysterious band of robbers called the Chauffeurs,
who infested all the roads leading to the Rhine,
with Schinderhannes at their head, furnished
many a tale which made the very marrow of
my bones run cold, and quenched even Amante's
power of talking. Her eyes grew large and
wild, her cheeks blanched, and for once she
sought by her looks help from me. The new
call upon me roused me. I rose and said, with
their permission my husband and I would seek
our bed, for that we had travelled far and were
early risers. I added that we would get up
betimes, and finish our piece of work. The
blacksmith said we should be early birds if we
rose before him; and the good wife seconded
my proposal with kindly bustle. One other such
story as those they had been relating, and I do
believe Amante would have fainted.

As it was, a night's rest set her up; we arose
and finished our work betimes, and shared the
plentiful breakfast of the family. Then we had
to set forth again; only knowing that to Forbach
we must not go, yet believing, as was indeed
the case, that Forbach lay between us and that
Germany to which we were directing our course.
Two days more we wandered on, making a
round, I suspect, and returning upon the road
to Forbach, a league or two nearer to that town
than the blacksmith's house. But as we never
made inquiries I hardly knew where we were,
when we came one night to a small town, with a
good large rambling inn in the very centre of the
principal street. We had begun to feel as if
there were more safety in towns than in the
loneliness of the country. As we had parted
with a ring of mine not many days before to a
travelling jeweller, who was too glad to
purchase it far below its real value to make many
inquiries as to how it came into the possession
of a poor working tailor such as Amante seemed
to be, we resolved to stay at this inn all night,
and gather such particulars and information as
we could by which to direct our onward course.

We took our supper in the darkest corner
of the salle-à-manger, having previously
bargained for a small bedroom across the court, and
over the stables. We needed food sorely; but
we hurried on our meal from dread of any one
entering that public room who might recognise
us. Just in the middle of our meal the public
diligence drove lumbering up under the porte
cochère, and disgorged its passengers. Most of
them turned into the room where we sat,
cowering and fearful, for the door was opposite
to the porter's lodge, and both opened on to the
wide-covered entrance from the street. Among
the passengers came in a young fair-haired lady,
attended by an elderly French maid. The poor
young creature tossed her head, and shrank
away from the common room, full of evil smells
and promiscuous company, and demanded in
German French to be taken to some private
apartment. We heard that she and her maid
had come in the coupé, and probably from pride,
poor young lady! she had avoided all association
with her fellow-passengers, thereby exciting
their dislike and ridicule. All these little pieces
of hearsay had a significance to us afterwards,
though at the time the only remark made that
bore upon the future was Amante's whisper to
me that the young lady's hair was exactly the
colour of mine, which she had cut off and burnt
in the stove in the miller's kitchen in one of her
descents from our hiding-place in the loft.

As soon as we could, we struck round in the
shadow, leaving the boisterous and merry
fellow-passengers to their supper. We crossed the
court, borrowed a lantern from the ostler, and
scrambled up the rude steps to our chamber
above the stable. There was no door into it;
the entrance was the hole into which the ladder
fitted. The window looked into the court. We