There was something terrifying in this absolute silence, in such intense darkness, in this constant wandering towards a goal that seemed for ever distant, and in all this weary, weary fruitless waiting; and these men, who lived their life through, drunken with blood, deafened by the cries of their victims, satiated with the moans of the helpless and the innocent, hardly dared to look around them, lest they should see ghoulish forms flitting through the gloom.

Soon they reached the cross-roads, and in the dense blackness of the night the gaunt arms of the sign-post pointed ghostlike towards the north.

The men hung back, wrapped in the darkness as in a pall, while Roger advanced alone.

“Hola!  Is anyone there?” he called softly.

Then, as no reply came, he added more loudly: 

“Hola!  A friend—­with some clothes found in the Rue Berthier.  Is anyone here?  Hola!  A friend!”

But only from the gently murmuring river far away the melancholy call of a waterfowl seemed to echo mockingly: 

“A friend!”

Just then the clock of Courbevoie Church struck the midnight hour.

“It is too late,” whispered the men.

They did not swear, nor did they curse their leader.  Somehow it seemed as if they had expected all along that the Englishman would evade their vengeance yet again, that he would lure them out into the cold and into the darkness, and then that he would mock them, fool them, and finally disappear into the night.

It seemed futile to wait any longer.  They were so sure that they had failed again.

“Who goes there?”

The sound of naked feet and of wooden sabots pattering on the distant footbridge had caused Roger to utter the quick challenge.

“Hola!  Hola!  Are you there?” was the loud, breathless response.

The next moment the darkness became alive with men moving quickly forward, and raucous shouts of “Where are they?” “Have you got them?” “Don’t let them go!” filled the air.

“Got whom?” “Who are they?” “What is it?” were the wild counter-cries.

“The man!  The girl!  The children!  Where are they?”

“What?  Which?  The Lebeau family?  They are here with us.”

“Where?”

Where, indeed?  To a call to them from Roger there came no answer, nor did a hasty search result in finding them—­the old man, the two boys, and the girl carrying the bundle of clothes had vanished into the night.

“In the name of—–­, what does this mean?” cried hoarse voices in the crowd.

The new-comers, breathless, terrified, shaking with superstitious fear, tried to explain.

“The Lebeau family—­the old man, the girl, the two boys—­we discovered after your departure, locked up in the cellar of the house—­prisoners.”

“But, then—­the others?” they gasped.

“The girl and the children whom you saw must have been some aristocrats in disguise.  The old man who spoke to you was that cursed Englishman—­ the Scarlet Pimpernel!”