“Where can they be going?” asked they.

They followed the carriage.  The two gentlemen drove to the station.  They had received a telegram, and were expecting the return of the marchioness and M. Folgat, accompanied, this time, by the old marquis.

They reached there much too soon.  The local branch railway which goes to Sauveterre is not famous for regularity, and still reminds its patrons occasionally of the old habits of stage-coaches, when the driver or the conductor had, at the last moment, to stop to pick up something they had forgotten.  At a quarter-past midnight the train, which ought to have been there twenty minutes before, had not yet been signalled.  Every thing around was silent and deserted.  Through the windows the station-master might be seen fast asleep in his huge leather chair.  Clerks and porters all were asleep, stretched out on the benches of the waiting-room.  But people are accustomed to such delays at Sauveterre; they are prepared for being kept waiting:  and the doctor and M. de Chandore were walking up and down the platform, being neither astonished nor impatient at the irregularity.  Nor would they have been much surprised if they had been told that they were closely watched all the time:  they knew their good town.  Still it was so.  Two curious men, more obstinate than the others, had jumped into the omnibus which runs between the station and the town; and now, standing a little aside, they said to each other,—­

“I say, what can they be waiting for?”

At last towards one o’clock, a bell rang, and the station seemed to start into life.  The station-master opened his door, the porters stretched themselves and rubbed their eyes, oaths were heard, doors slammed, and the large hand-barrows came in sight.

Then a low thunder-like noise came nearer and nearer; and almost instantly a fierce red light at the far end of the track shone out in the dark night like a ball of fire.  M. de Chandore and the doctor hastened to the waiting-room.

The train stopped.  A door opened, and the marchioness appeared, leaning on M. Folgat’s arm.  The marquis, a travelling-bag in hand, followed next.

“That was it!” said the volunteer spies, who had flattened their noses against the window-panes.

And, as the train brought no other passengers, they succeeded in making the omnibus conductor start at once, eager as they were to proclaim the arrival of the prisoner’s father.

The hour was unfavorable:  everybody was asleep; but they did not give up the hope of finding somebody yet at the club.  People stay up very late at the club, for there is play going on there, and at times pretty heavy play:  you can lose your five hundred francs quite readily there.  Thus the indefatigable news-hunters had a fair chance of finding open ears for their great piece of news.  And yet, if they had been less eager to spread it, they might have witnessed, perhaps not entirely unmoved, this first interview between M. de Chandore and the Marquis de Boiscoran.