The poor girl remained at the end of the gallery, fixing her eyes on the sleeping sentry, and ready to disappear at the slightest movement.  The noise made by spurs on the pavement and by the horse at the end of the courtyard had half awakened him.  He rose, and suspecting some surprise, ran to the shed.  His horse was no longer there; the marquis, in his haste to escape, had taken the first which came to hand, and this was the soldier’s.  Then the soldier gave the alarm; his comrades woke up.  They ran to the prisoner’s room, and found it empty.  The provost came from his bed in a dazed condition.  The prisoner had escaped.

Then the young girl, pretending to have been roused by the noise, hindered the preparations by mislaying the saddlery, impeding the horsemen instead of helping them; nevertheless, after a quarter of an hour, all the party were galloping along the road.  The provost swore like a pagan.  The best horses led the way, and the sentinel, who rode the marquis’s, and who had a greater interest in catching the prisoner, far outstripped his companions; he was followed by the sergeant, equally well mounted, and as the broken fence showed the line he had taken, after some minutes they were in view of him, but at a great distance.  However, the marquis was losing ground; the horse he had taken was the worst in the troop, and he had pressed it as hard as it could go.  Turning in the saddle, he saw the soldiers half a musket-shot off; he urged his horse more and more, tearing his sides with his spurs; but shortly the beast, completely winded, foundered; the marquis rolled with it in the dust, but when rolling over he caught hold of the holsters, which he found to contain pistols; he lay flat by the side of the horse, as if he had fainted, with a pistol at full cock in his hand.  The sentinel, mounted on a valuable horse, and more than two hundred yards ahead of his serafile, came up to him.  In a moment the marquis, jumping up before he had time to resist him, shot him through the head; the horseman fell, the marquis jumped up in his place without even setting foot in the stirrup, started off at a gallop, and went away like the wind, leaving fifty yards behind him the non-commissioned officer, dumbfounded with what had just passed before his eyes.

The main body of the escort galloped up, thinking that he was taken; and the provost shouted till he was hoarse, “Do not kill him!” But they found only the sergeant, trying to restore life to his man, whose skull was shattered, and who lay dead on the spot.

As for the marquis, he was out of sight; for, fearing a fresh pursuit, he had plunged into the cross roads, along which he rode a good hour longer at full gallop.  When he felt pretty sure of having shaken the police off his track, and that their bad horses could not overtake him, he determined to slacken to recruit his horse; he was walking him along a hollow lane, when he saw a peasant approaching; he asked him the