It was in the grey dawning of the next day, at the hour before the sun
rose, that word of M. de Tignonville's fate came to them in the castle.
The fog which had masked the van and coming of night hung thick on its
retreating skirts, and only reluctantly and little by little gave up to
sight and daylight a certain thing which night had left at the end of the
causeway. The first man to see it was Carlat, from the roof of the
gateway; and he rubbed eyes weary with watching, and peered anew at it
through the mist, fancying himself back in the Place Ste.-Croix at
Angers, supposing for a wild moment the journey a dream, and the return a
nightmare. But rub as he might, and stare as he might, the ugly outlines
of the thing he had seen persisted--nay, grew sharper as the haze began
to lift from the grey, slow-heaving floor of sea. He called another man
and bade him look.
"What is it?" he said. "D'you see, there? Below the village?"
"'Tis a gibbet," the man answered, with a foolish laugh; they had watched
all night. "God keep us from it."
"A gibbet?"
"Ay!"
"But what is it for? What is it doing there?"
"It is there to hang those they have taken, very like," the man answered,
stupidly practical. And then other men came up, and stared at it and
growled in their beards. Presently there were eight or ten on the roof
of the gateway looking towards the land and discussing the thing; and by-
and-by a man was descried approaching along the causeway with a white
flag in his hand.
At that Carlat bade one fetch the minister. "He understands things," he
muttered, "and I misdoubt this. And see," he cried after the messenger,
"that no word of it come to Mademoiselle!" Instinctively in the maiden
home he reverted to the maiden title.
The messenger went, and came again bringing La Tribe, whose head rose
above the staircase at the moment the envoy below came to a halt before
the gate. Carlat signed to the minister to come forward; and La Tribe,
after sniffing the salt air, and glancing at the long, low, misty shore
and the stiff ugly shape which stood at the end of the causeway, looked
down and met the envoy's eyes. For a moment no one spoke. Only the men
who had remained on the gateway, and had watched the stranger's coming,
breathed hard.
At last, "I bear a message," the man announced loudly and clearly, "for
the lady of Vrillac. Is she present?"
"Give your message!" La Tribe replied.
"It is for her ears only."
"Do you want to enter?"
"No!" The man answered so hurriedly that more than one smiled. He had
the bearing of a lay clerk of some precinct, a verger or sacristan; and
after a fashion the dress of one also, for he was in dusty black and wore
no sword, though he was girded with a belt. "No!" he repeated, "but if
Madame will come to the gate, and speak to me--"