Nevertheless, the motionless figure, looming Homeric through the fog, with gleams of wet light reflected from the steel about it, dwelt long in her mind.  The road which Badelon followed, slowly at first, and with greater speed as the horses warmed to their work, and the women, sore and battered resigned themselves to suffering, wound across a flat expanse broken by a few hills.  These were little more than mounds, and for the most part were veiled from sight by the low-lying sea-mist, through which gnarled and stunted oaks rose mysterious, to fade as strangely.  Weird trees they were, with branches unlike those of this world’s trees, rising in a grey land without horizon or limit, through which our travellers moved, weary phantoms in a clinging nightmare.  At a walk, at a trot, more often at a jaded amble, they pushed on behind Badelon’s humped shoulders.  Sometimes the fog hung so thick about them that they saw only those who rose and fell in the saddles immediately before them; sometimes the air cleared a little, the curtain rolled up a space, and for a minute or two they discerned stretches of unfertile fields, half-tilled and stony, or long tracts of gorse and broom, with here and there a thicket of dwarf shrubs or a wood of wind-swept pines.  Some looked and saw these things; more rode on sulky and unseeing, supporting impatiently the toils of a flight from they knew not what.

To do Tignonville justice, he was not of these.  On the contrary, he seemed to be in a better temper on this day and, where so many took things unheroically, he showed to advantage.  Avoiding the Countess and riding with Carlat, he talked and laughed with marked cheerfulness; nor did he ever fail, when the mist rose, to note this or that landmark, and confirm Badelon in the way he was going.

“We shall be at Lege by noon!” he cried more than once, “and if M. le Comte persists in his plan, may reach Vrillac by late sunset.  By way of Challans!”

And always Carlat answered, “Ay, by Challans, Monsieur, so be it!”

He proved, too, so far right in his prediction that noon saw them drag, a weary train, into the hamlet of Lege, where the road from Nantes to Olonne runs southward over the level of Poitou.  An hour later Count Hannibal rode in with six of his eight men, and, after a few minutes’ parley with Badelon, who was scanning the horses, he called Carlat to him.  The old man came.

“Can we reach Vrillac to-night?” Count Hannibal asked curtly.

“By Challans, my lord,” the steward answered, “I think we can.  We call it seven hours’ riding from here.”

“And that route is the shortest?”

“In time, M. le Comte, the road being better.”

Count Hannibal bent his brows.  “And the other way?” he said.

“Is by Commequiers, my lord.  It is shorter in distance.”

“By how much?”

“Two leagues.  But there are fordings and a salt marsh; and with Madame and the women—­”