Monsieur de Vivonne had laid his ambuscade with discretion.  With a closed carriage and a band of chosen ruffians he had left the palace a good half-hour before the king’s messengers, and by the aid of his sister’s gold he had managed that their journey should not be a very rapid one.  On reaching the branch road he had ordered the coachman to drive some little distance along it, and had tethered all the horses to a fence under his charge.  He had then stationed one of the band as a sentinel some distance up the main highway to flash a light when the two courtiers were approaching.  A stout cord had been fastened eighteen inches from the ground to the trunk of a wayside sapling, and on receiving the signal the other end was tied to a gate-post upon the further side.  The two cavaliers could not possibly see it, coming as it did at the very curve of the road, and as a consequence their horses fell heavily to the ground, and brought them down with them.  In an instant the dozen ruffians who had lurked in the shadow of the trees sprang out upon them, sword in hand; but there was no movement from either of their victims.  De Catinat lay breathing heavily, one leg under his horse’s neck, and the blood trickling in a thin stream down his pale face, and falling, drop by drop, on to his silver shoulder-straps.  Amos Green was unwounded, but his injured girth had given way in the fall, and he had been hurled from his horse on to the hard road with a violence which had driven every particle of breath from his body.

Monsieur de Vivonne lit a lantern, and flashed it upon the faces of the two unconscious men.  “This is a bad business, Major Despard,” said he to the man next him.  “I believe that they are both gone.”

“Tut! tut!  By my soul, men did not die like that when I was young!” answered the other, leaning forward his fierce grizzled face into the light of the lantern.  “I’ve been cast from my horse as often as there are tags to my doublet, but, save for the snap of a bone or two, I never had any harm from it.  Pass your rapier under the third rib of the horses, De la Touche; they will never be fit to set hoof to ground again.”  Two sobbing gasps and the thud of their straining necks falling back to earth told that the two steeds had come to the end of their troubles.

“Where is Latour?” asked Monsieur de Vivonne.  “Achille Latour has studied medicine at Montpellier.  Where is he?”

“Here I am, your excellency.  It is not for me to boast, but I am as handy a man with a lancet as with a rapier, and it was an evil day for some sick folk when I first took to buff and bandolier.  Which would you have me look to?”

“This one in the road.”

The trooper bent over Amos Green.  “He is not long for this world,” said he.  “I can tell it by the catch of his breath.”

“And what is his injury?”

“A subluxation of the epigastrium.  Ah, the words of learning will still come to my tongue, but it is hard to put into common terms.  Methinks that it were well for me to pass my dagger through his throat, for his end is very near.”