“I believe that’s a fairy-tale, sir.  There’s something queer about these people.  The girl says she is a grocer’s servant, and has hands like a duchess’s.”

The colonel looked at us sharply, neither friendly nor unfriendly.  He said in a perfectly neutral manner: 

“It is of no consequence whether she be a servant or a duchess—­has a mother or not.  The point is whether these people have the countersign.  If they have it, they can pass, whoever they are.”

“They have not,” the captain answered at once.  “I think you would do well, sir, to demand the lady’s name.”

Mademoiselle started forward for a bold stroke just as the superior officer demanded of her, “The countersign?” As he said the word, she pronounced distinctly her name: 

“Lorance—­”

“Enough!” the colonel said instantly.  “Pass them through, Guilbert.”

The young captain stood in a mull, but no more bewildered than we.

“Mighty queer!” he muttered.  “Why didn’t she give it to me?”

“Stir yourself, sir!” his superior gave sharp command.  “They have the countersign; pass them through.”

XXVIII

St. Denis—­and Navarre!

As the gates clanged into place behind us, Gilles stopped short in his tracks to say, as if addressing the darkness before him: 

“Am I, Gilles, awake or asleep?  Are we in Paris, or are we on the St. Denis road?”

“Oh, come, come!” Mademoiselle hastened us on, murmuring half to herself as we went:  “O you kind saints!  I saw he could not make us out for friends or foes; I thought my name might turn the scale.  Mayenne always gives a name for a countersign; to-night, by a marvel, it was mine!”

I like not to think often of that five-mile tramp to St. Denis.  The road was dark, rutty, and in places still miry from Monday night’s rain.  Strange shadows dogged us all the way.  Sometimes they were only bushes or wayside shrines, but sometimes they moved.  This was not now a wolf country, but two-footed wolves were plenty, and as dangerous.  The hangers-on of the army—­beggars, feagues, and footpads—­hovered, like the cowardly beasts of prey they were, about the outskirts of the city.  Did a leaf rustle, we started; did a shambling shape in the gloom whine for alms, we made ready for onset.  Gilles produced from some place of concealment—­his jerkin, or his leggings, or somewhere—­a brace of pistols, and we walked with finger on trigger, taking care, whenever a rustle in the grass, a shadow in the bushes, seemed to follow us, to talk loud and cheerfully of common things, the little interests of a humble station.  Thanks to this diplomacy, or the pistol-barrels shining in the faint starlight, none molested us, though we encountered more than one mysterious company.  We never passed into the gloom under an arch of trees without the resolution to fight for our lives.  We never came out again