Count Hannibal

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.