Count Hannibal

When Tignonville presently looked back he found that Count Hannibal and

six of his riders had pulled up and were walking their horses far in the

rear. On which he would have done the same himself; but Badelon called

over his shoulder the eternal "Forward, Monsieur, en avant!" and

sullenly, hating the man and his master more deeply every hour,

Tignonville was forced to push on, with thoughts of vengeance in his

heart.

Trot, trot! Trot, trot! Through a country which had lost its smiling

wooded character and grew more sombre and less fertile the farther they

left the Loire behind them. Trot, trot! Trot, trot!--for ever, it

seemed to some. Javette wept with fatigue, and the other women were

little better. The Countess herself spoke seldom except to cheer the

Provost's daughter; who, poor girl, flung suddenly out of the round of

her life and cast among strangers, showed a better spirit than might have

been expected. At length, on the slopes of some low hills, which they

had long seen before them, a cluster of houses and a church appeared; and

Badelon, drawing rein, cried-"Beaupreau, Madame! We stay an hour!"

It was six o'clock. They had ridden some hours without a break. With

sighs and cries of pain the women dropped from their clumsy saddles,

while the men laid out such food--it was little--as had been brought, and

hobbled the horses that they might feed. The hour passed rapidly, and

when it had passed Badelon was inexorable. There was wailing when he

gave the word to mount again; and Tignonville, fiercely resenting this

dumb, reasonless flight, was at heart one of the mutineers. But Badelon

said grimly that they might go on and live, or stay and die, as it

pleased them; and once more they climbed painfully to their saddles, and

jogged steadily on through the sunset, through the gloaming, through the

darkness, across a weird, mysterious country of low hills and narrow

plains which grew more wild and less cultivated as they advanced.

Fortunately the horses had been well saved during the long leisurely

journey to Angers, and now went well and strongly. When they at last

unsaddled for the night in a little dismal wood within a mile of Clisson,

they had placed some forty miles between themselves and Angers.