Toward mid-afternoon a solitary mischance threw a passing shadow upon his content.  As he trudged along the river road, on the last lap of his journey—­Nant almost in sight—­he heard a curious, intermittent rumble on a steep hillside whose foot was skirted by the road, and sought its cause barely in time to leap for life out of the path of a great boulder that, dislodged from its bed, possibly by last night’s deluge, was hurtling downhill with such momentum that it must have crushed Duchemin to a pulp had he been less alert.

Striking the road with an impact that left a deep, saucer-shaped dent, with one final bound the huge stone, amid vast splashings, found its last resting place in the river.

Duchemin moved out of the way of the miniature avalanche that followed, and for some minutes stood reviewing with a truculent eye the face of the hillside.  But nothing moved thereon, it was quite bare of good cover, little more than a slant of naked earth and shale, dotted manywhere with boulders, cousins to that which sought his life—­none, however, so large.  If human agency had moved it, the stone had come from the high skyline of the hill; and by the time one could climb to this last, Duchemin was sure, there would be nobody there to find.

The remainder of the afternoon was wasted utterly on the terrasse of the Cafe de l’Univers, with the chateau ever in view, wishing it were convenable to make one’s duty call without more delay.  But it wasn’t; not to wait a decent interval would be self-betraying, since Duchemin had no longer any immediate intention of moving on from Nant; finally, he rather hoped to get news at Millau that would strengthen a prayer to Eve de Montalais to be sensible and remove her jewels to a place of safe-keeping before it was too late.

Millau, however, disappointed.  At the end of a twenty-mile walk on a day of suffocating heat, Duchemin plodded wearily into the Hotel du Commerce, engaged a room for the night, and was given a telegram from London which rewarded decoding to some such effect as this: 

“Monk American independent means good repute no information as to others have asked Surete concerning Lorgnes would give something to know what mischief you are meddling with this trip and why the deuce you must.”

Few things are better calculated to curdle the milk of human kindness than to find that one’s fellow-man has meanly contrived to keep his reputation fair when one is satisfied it should be otherwise.  Duchemin used bitter language in strict confidence with himself, disliked his dinner and, after conscientiously loathing the sights of Millau for an hour or two, sought his bed in the devil’s own humour.

Though he waited till eleven of the following forenoon, there was no supplementary telegram:  London evidently meant him to understand that the Surete in Paris had communicated nothing to the discredit of Monsieur le Comte de Lorgnes and his consort.