“See, Madame,” said the poor fugitive gently, “how can I find my way through these mountains, which I do not know, and where there are no roads—­where the foot-paths are scarcely discernible.”

With a quick movement Balstain’s wife pushed Lacheneur out, and turning him as one does a blind man to set him on the right track: 

“Walk straight before you,” said she, “always against the wind.  God will protect you.  Farewell!”

He turned to ask further directions, but she had re-entered the house and closed the door.

Upheld by a feverish excitement, he walked for long hours.  He soon lost his way, and wandered on through the mountains, benumbed with cold, stumbling over rocks, sometimes falling.

Why he was not precipitated to the depths of some chasm it is difficult to explain.

He lost all idea of his whereabouts, and the sun was high in the heavens when he at last met a human being of whom he could inquire his way.

It was a little shepherd-boy, in pursuit of some stray goats, whom he encountered; but the lad, frightened by the wild and haggard appearance of the stranger, at first refused to approach.

The offer of a piece of money induced him to come a little nearer.

“You are on the summit of the mountain, Monsieur,” said he; “and exactly on the boundary line.  Here is France; there is Savoy.”

“And what is the nearest village?”

“On the Savoyard side, Saint-Jean-de-Coche; on the French side, Saint-Pavin.”

So after all his terrible exertions, Lacheneur was not a league from the inn.

Appalled by this discovery, he remained for a moment undecided which course to pursue.

What did it matter?  Why should the doomed hesitate?  Do not all roads lead to the abyss into which they must sink?

He remembered the gendarmes that the innkeeper’s wife had warned him against, and slowly and with great difficulty descended the steep mountainside leading down to France.

He was near Saint-Pavin, when, before an isolated cottage, he saw a pretty peasant woman spinning in the sunshine.

He dragged himself toward her, and in weak tones begged her hospitality.

On seeing this man, whose face was ghastly pale, and whose clothing was torn and soiled with dust and blood, the woman rose, evidently more surprised than alarmed.

She looked at him closely, and saw that his age, his stature, and his features corresponded with the descriptions of Lacheneur, which had been scattered thickly about the frontier.

“You are the conspirator they are hunting for, and for whom they promise a reward of twenty thousand francs,” she said.

Lacheneur trembled.

“Yes, I am Lacheneur,” he replied, after a moment’s hesitation; “I am Lacheneur.  Betray me, if you will, but in charity’s name give me a morsel of bread, and allow me to rest a little.”