“It would be longer?”

The steward hesitated.  “I think so,” he said slowly, his eyes wandering to the grey misty landscape, against which the poor hovels of the village stood out naked and comfortless.  A low thicket of oaks sheltered the place from south-westerly gales.  On the other three sides it lay open.

“Very good,” Tavannes said curtly.  “Be ready to start in ten minutes.  You will guide us.”

But when the ten minutes had elapsed and the party were ready to start, to the astonishment of all the steward was not to be found.  To peremptory calls for him no answer came; and a hurried search through the hamlet proved equally fruitless.  The only person who had seen him since his interview with Tavannes turned out to be M. de Tignonville; and he had seen him mount his horse five minutes before, and move off—­as he believed—­by the Challans road.

“Ahead of us?”

“Yes, M. le Comte,” Tignonville answered, shading his eyes and gazing in the direction of the fringe of trees.  “I did not see him take the road, but he was beside the north end of the wood when I saw him last.  Thereabouts!” and he pointed to a place where the Challans road wound round the flank of the wood.  “When we are beyond that point, I think we shall see him.”

Count Hannibal growled a word in his beard, and, turning in his saddle, looked back the way he had come.  Half a mile away, two or three dots could be seen approaching across the plain.  He turned again.

“You know the road?” he said, curtly addressing the young man.

“Perfectly.  As well as Carlat.”

“Then lead the way, Monsieur, with Badelon.  And spare neither whip nor spur.  There will be need of both, if we would lie warm to-night.”

Tignonville nodded assent and, wheeling his horse, rode to the head of the party, a faint smile playing about his mouth.  A moment, and the main body moved off behind him, leaving Count Hannibal and six men to cover the rear.  The mist, which at noon had risen for an hour or two, was closing down again, and they had no sooner passed clear of the wood than the trees faded out of sight behind them.  It was not wonderful that they could not see Carlat.  Objects a hundred paces from them were completely hidden.

Trot, trot!  Trot, trot! through a grey world so featureless, so unreal that the riders, now dozing in the saddle, and now awaking, seemed to themselves to stand still, as in a nightmare.  A trot and then a walk, and then a trot again; and all a dozen times repeated, while the women bumped along in their wretched saddles, and the horses stumbled, and the men swore at them.

Ha!  La Garnache at last, and a sharp turn southward to Challans.  The Countess raised her head, and began to look about her.  There, should be a church, she knew; and there, the old ruined tower built by wizards, or the Carthaginians, so old tradition ran; and there, to the westward, the great salt marshes towards Noirmoutier.  The mist hid all, but the knowledge that they were there set her heart beating, brought tears to her eyes, and lightened the long road to Challans.