‘See that!’ said Savary eagerly.  ’He is there sure enough, or why should they be on their guard?  Let us take this road which winds round the hill, and they will not see us until we are at the very door.’

‘Should we not gallop forward?’ I suggested.

’The ground is too cut up.  The longer way is the safer.  As long as we are upon the road they cannot tell us from any other travellers.’

We walked our horses along the path, therefore, with as unconcerned an air as we could assume; but a sharp exclamation made us glance suddenly round, and there was the woman standing on a hillock by the roadside and gazing down at us with a face that was rigid with suspicion.  The sight of the military bearing of my companions changed all her fear into certainties.  In an instant she had whipped the shawl from her shoulders, and was waving it frantically over her head.  With a hearty curse Savary spurred his horse up the bank and galloped straight for the mill, with Gerard and myself at his heels.

It was only just in time.  We were still a hundred paces from the door when a man sprang out from it, and gazed about him, his head whisking this way and that.  There could be no mistaking the huge bristling beard, the broad chest, and the rounded shoulders of Toussac.  A glance showed him that we would ride him down before he could get away, and he sprang back into the mill, closing the heavy door with a clang behind him.

‘The window, Gerard, the window!’ cried Savary.

There was a small, square window opening into the basement room of the mill.  The young hussar disengaged himself from the saddle and flew through it as the clown goes through the hoops at Franconi’s.  An instant later he had opened the door for us, with the blood streaming from his face and hands.

‘He has fled up the stair,’ said he.

‘Then we need be in no hurry, since he cannot pass us,’ said Savary, as we sprang from our horses.  ’You have carried his first line of entrenchments most gallantly, Lieutenant Gerard.  I hope you are not hurt?’

‘A few scratches, General, nothing more.’

‘Get your pistols, then.  Where is the miller?’

‘Here I am,’ said a squat, rough little fellow, appearing in the open doorway.  ’What do you mean, you brigands, by entering my mill in this fashion?  I am sitting reading my paper and smoking my pipe of coltsfoot, as my custom is about this time of the evening, and suddenly, without a word, a man comes flying through my window, covers me with glass, and opens my door to his friends outside.  I’ve had trouble enough with my one lodger all day without three more of you turning up.’

‘You have the conspirator Toussac in your house.’

‘Toussac!’ cried the miller.  ’Nothing of the kind.  His name is Maurice, and he is a merchant in silks.’

‘He is the man we want.  We come in the Emperor’s name.’