“’Tis too late.”

“Come, Ned, we will go to Mr. Jefferson’s and see whether he has heard this terrible news,” said Mr. Morris, who was deeply affected by the intelligence.

Together they entered Mr. Morris’s carriage and drove toward the Legation.  As they made their way along the boulevards, they were astonished to see pedestrians and carriages suddenly turn about and come toward them.  In a few moments a troop of German cavalry, with drawn sabres, approached at a hand gallop, and, on reaching the Place Louis Quinze, Mr. Morris and Mr. Calvert found themselves confronted by an angry mob of several hundred persons, who had intrenched themselves among the great blocks of stone piled there for the new bridge building.  At the same instant, on looking back, they perceived that the cavalry had faced about and were returning, so that they found themselves hemmed in between the troops and the menacing mob.  Many other carriages were caught in the same cul-de-sac, and Calvert, looking out, saw the pale face of Madame de St. Andre at the window of her carriage beside him.  Her coachman was trying in vain to get his horses through the crowd and was looking confoundedly frightened.  In an instant Calvert was out of his carriage and at her coach-door.

“You must get in Mr. Morris’s carriage, Madame,” he says, briefly, holding the door open and extending a hand to Adrienne.  At his tone of command, without a word, she stepped quickly from her coach into that of Mr. Morris.

“Heavens, Madame! are you alone in this mob?” asks Mr. Morris, in much concern.

“Yes—­I have just left my aunt in the rue St. Honore,” says Adrienne, sinking down on the cushions.  Mr. Morris put his head out of the window.

“Drive on, Martin!” he calls out.  “To Mr. Jefferson’s.”  But it is impossible for the plunging horses to move, so dense is the mob and so threatening its attitude.

“They are arming themselves with stones,” he says, looking out again.  “We are in a pretty pass between this insane mob and the cavalry, which is advancing!” Suddenly he bursts the door open and, standing on the coach-step, so that he is well seen, he calls out, “Drive on there, Martin!  Who stops an American’s carriage in Paris?”

As he made his appearance at the coach-door a shout went up, and a man standing near and pointing to Mr. Morris’s wooden stump, cries out, “Make way for the American patriot crippled in the Revolution!” At his words a great cheer goes up, and Mr. Morris, scrambling back into the coach, bursts out into such a hearty laugh that Calvert, and Adrienne, too, in spite of her fright, cannot refrain from joining in it.  The people fall back and a lane is formed, through which Martin urges his horses at a gallop.

“’Twill be a good story to tell Mr. Jefferson,” says Mr. Morris, when he can speak.  “I think this wooden stump has never done such yeoman service as to-day.”

“If I am not mistaken, that was my friend Bertrand,” says Calvert, looking back at the man who had started the cheer for Mr. Morris.