Bertrand hesitated and looked dubious.

“Come, man, it’s for your own good.  You don’t want to die before you get there.”  Max’s tone was severely practical.

“Ah no!  Not that!  I must not fail, Max.  I must not fail.”  Bertrand spoke with great earnestness.  He laid an impressive hand on his companion’s arm.  For a moment his face betrayed emotion.  “I cannot—­I will not—­die before her happiness is assured.  It is that for which I now live, for which I am ready to give my life.  Max—­mon ami—­you will not let me die before—­my work—­is done!”

He spoke pantingly, as though speech had become an effort.  The strain was beginning to tell upon him.  But his eyes pleaded for him with a dumb intensity hard to meet.

Max took his wrist once more into his steady grasp.  “If you will do as I tell you,” he said, “I will see that you don’t.  Is that a bargain?”

A faint smile shone in the dark eyes at the peremptoriness of his speech.  “But how you are despotic—­you English!” protested the soft voice.

“Do you agree to that?” insisted Max.

“Mais oui.  I submit myself—­always—­to you English.  How can one—­do other?”

“Then don’t talk any more,” said Max, with authority.  “There’s no time for drivel, so save your breath.  You will want it when you get to Valpre.”

“Ah, Valpre!” whispered Bertrand very softly as one utters a beloved name; and again more softly, “Valpre!”

CHAPTER V

THE STRANGER

A long wave broke with a splash and spread up the sand in a broad band of silver foam.  The tide was at its lowest, and the black rocks of Valpre stood up stark and grotesque in the evening light.  The Gothic archway of the Magic Cave yawned mysteriously in the face of the cliff, and over it, with shrill wailings, flew countless seagulls, flashing their wings in the sunset.

The man who walked alone along the shore was too deeply engrossed in thought to take much note of his surroundings, although more than once he turned his eyes towards the darkness of the cave.  A belt of rocks stretched between, covered with slimy, green seaweed.  It was evident that he had no intention of crossing this to explore the mysteries beyond.  Just out of reach of the sea he moved, his hands behind him and his head bent.

All through the day he had been pent in a stuffy courtroom, closely following the evidence that, like a net of strong weaving, was gradually closing around the prisoner Guillaume Rodolphe.  All France was seething over the trial.  All Europe watched with vivid interest.

Another man’s name had begun to be uttered on all sides, in court and out of it, coupled continuously with the name of the man who was standing his trial.  Bertrand de Montville, where was he?  All France would soon be waiting to do him justice, to pay him high honour, to compensate him for the indignities he had wrongfully suffered.  He would have to face another court-martial, it was true; but the outcome of that would be a foregone conclusion, and his acquittal would raise him to a pinnacle of popularity to which he had surely never aspired, even in the days when ambition had been the ruling passion of his life.