In two or three minutes all was over. Five or
six only of the assailants cut their way through the
footmen who had attacked them in rear, while twelve
lay dead or dying on the ground. Ronald’s
first impulse was to ride up to the carriage to assure
his mother of his safety, his next to leap off his
horse and grasp the hand of the chief of the robbers.
“You have kept your promise nobly,” he
said, “and arrived at the very nick of time.
They were beginning to press us hotly; and though I
fancy we should have rendered an account of a good
many more, we must have been beaten in the end.”
“I was farther behind than I intended to be,”
the man said; “but we were obliged to keep in
hiding some little distance behind them. There
were four parties of them. We kept them in sight
all yesterday, and last night they assembled a mile
or two away. I had men watching them all night,
and this morning we followed them here, and saw them
take up their position on both sides of the road.
We crept up as closely as we dared without being observed,
but you had for a couple of minutes to bear the brunt
of it alone.”
“I thank you most heartily,” Ronald said.
“My mother will thank you herself” So
saying, he led them to the door of the carriage, which
he opened.
“Mother, I told you that if we were attacked
I relied upon help being near at hand. We owe
our lives, for I have no doubt that yours as well as
mine would have been taken, to this brave man and his
followers.”
“I thank you most sincerely, sir,” the
countess said. “At present I feel like
one in a dream; for I have been so long out of the
world that such a scene as this has well nigh bewildered
me.”
“I am only too glad to have been of service,”
the man said as he stood bareheaded. “I
am not a good man, madame. I am one of those whom
the necessities of the times have driven to earn their
living as they can without much regard to the law;
but I trust that I have not quite lost my instincts
as a gentleman, and I am only too glad to have been
able to be of some slight assistance to a persecuted
lady; for your son, the other night, related to us
something of the treatment which you have had to endure.”
With a bow he now stepped back. His followers
were engaged in searching the pockets of the fallen,
and found in them a store of money which spoke well
for the liberality of their employer, and well satisfied
the robbers for the work they had undertaken.
After a few words with her son the countess opened
a small bag she carried with her, and taking from it
a valuable diamond brooch, called the leader of the
band up and presented it to him.
Ronald and his party then remounted their horses —
the robbers had already overtaken and caught those
of the fallen assailants — the driver mounted
the box, and after a cordial farewell to their rescuers
the party proceeded on their way to Blois.
