“Hullo!” the man said, getting up and following him in.  “And who may you be, I should like to know, who makes so free?”

Rupert, without a word, sprang upon the man and bore him to the ground.  Then, seeing that there was an inner room, he lifted him, and ran him in there, the man being too astonished to offer the slightest resistance.  Then Rupert locked him in, and taking down the great key of the gate, which hung over the fireplace, went out, closed the great gate of the town, locked it on the outside, and threw the key into the moat.  Then he went off at a run and joined the marquis, who with Adele was waiting anxiously at the distance he had asked him.

“What have you been doing, Rupert?”

“I have just locked the great gate and thrown the key into the moat,” Rupert said.  “The gate is a solid one, and they will not get it open tonight.  If they are to pursue us, they must go round to one of the other gates, and then make a circuit to get into this road again.  I have locked the porter up, and I don’t suppose they will find it out till they ride up, half an hour hence.  They will try for another quarter of an hour to open the gate, and it will be another good half-hour’s ride to get round by the road, so we have over one hour’s start.”

“Capital, indeed,” the marquis said, as they galloped forward.  “The dangers you have gone through have made you quick witted indeed, Rupert.

“I see you have changed saddles.”

“Yes, your horse had been carrying double all day, so I thought it better to give a turn to the other.  It is fortunate that we have been making short journeys each day, and that our horses are comparatively fresh.”

“Why did you come out by the west gate, Rupert?  The north was our way.”

“Yes, our direct way,” Rupert said; “but I was thinking it over while waiting for you.  You see with the start we have got and good horses, we might have kept ahead of them for a day; but with one horse carrying double, there is no chance of us doing so for eighty miles.  We must hide up somewhere to let the horses rest.  They would make sure that we were going to take ship, and would be certain to send on straight to Nantes, so that we should be arrested when we arrive there.

“As it is we can follow this road for thirty miles, as if going to La Rochelle, and then strike up for a forty miles ride across to Nantes.”

“Well thought of, indeed,” Monsieur de Pignerolles said.

“Adele, this future lord and master of yours is as long headed as he is long limbed.”

Adele laughed happily.  The excitement, and the fresh air and the brisk pace, had raised her spirits; and with her father and lover to protect her, she had no fear of the danger that threatened them.

“With a ten miles start they ought not to overtake us till morning, Rupert.”

“No,” Rupert said, “supposing that we could keep on, but we cannot.  The horses have done twenty-five miles today.  They have had an hour and a half’s rest, but we must not do more than as much farther, or we shall run the risk of knocking them up.”