But as darkness came on and cloaked the little troop, and the storm which
the men had foreseen began to rumble in the west, his distaste for the
business waxed. The summer lightning which presently began to play
across the sky revealed not only the broad gleaming stream, between which
and a wooded hill their road ran, but the faces of his companions; and
these, in their turn, shed a grisly light on the bloody enterprise
towards which they were set. Nervous and ill at ease, the minister's
mind dwelt on the stages of that enterprise: the stealthy entrance
through the waterway, the ascent through the trap, the surprise, the
slaughter in the sleeping-chamber. And either because he had lived for
days in the victim's company, or was swayed by the arguments he had
addressed to another, the prospect shook his soul.
In vain he told himself that this was the oppressor; he saw only the man,
fresh roused from sleep, with the horror of impending dissolution in his
eyes. And when the rider, behind whom he sat, pointed to a faint spark
of light, at no great distance before them, and whispered that it was St.
Agnes's Chapel, hard by the inn, he could have cried with the best
Catholic of them all, "Inter pontem et fontem, Domine!" Nay, some such
words did pass his lips.
For the man before him turned halfway in his saddle. "What?" he asked.
But the Huguenot did not explain.