While these things were happening at Les Chouettes, Angelot was hurrying back from his mission to the Étang des Morts. He was full of wild happiness, a joy that could not be believed in, till he saw and touched Hélène again. His heart was as light as the air of that glorious morning, so keen, clear, and still on the high moorlands as he crossed them. He had done all and more than the little uncle expected of him. In the darkness before dawn, as he rode through the deep lanes beyond La Joubardière, he had met a friendly peasant who warned him that a party of police and gendarmes was watching the country a little farther south, towards the Étang des Morts. He therefore left his horse in a shed, took to the fields and woods, and intercepted César d'Ombré on his way to the rendezvous. Explanations were not altogether easy, for César cared little for the private affairs of young La Marinière. He had never expected much from the son of Urbain. He took his warning, and gave up his companionship easily enough. Striking off across country, avoiding all roads likely to be patrolled by the police, he made his way alone to Brittany and the coast, while Angelot returned by the way he had come. For the sake of taking the very shortest cut across the _landes_, he brought his horse up to La Joubardière and left him there. For no horse could carry him through the lanes, rocky as they were, at the pace that he could run and walk across country, and it was only because Uncle Joseph insisted on it that he had taken a horse at all. The golden light of sunrise spread over the moor as he ran. He took long leaps through the heather, and coveys of birds scuttled out of his way; but their lives were safe that morning, though his eyes followed them eagerly. Far beyond the purple _landes_, the woods of Lancilly lay heaped against the western sky, a billowy dark green sea of velvet touched with the bright gold of autumn and of sunrise; and the château itself shone out broad in its glittering whiteness. The guests were all gone now; the music was still; and for Angelot the place was empty, a mere shell, a pile of stones. Other roofs covered the joy of his life now. This shortest cut from La Joubardière did not bring him to Les Chouettes by the usual road, but by a sharp slope of moorland, all stones and bushes and no path at all, and then across one or two small fields into a narrow lane, a bridle-path between high straggling hedges, one way from Les Chouettes to La Marinière. The poplars by the manor gate, a shining row, lifted their tall heads, always softly rustling, a quarter of a mile farther on. Angelot ran across the fields, jumped a ditch, reached the lane at a sharp corner, and was turning to the right towards Les Chouettes, thinking in his joyful gladness that he would be back before even Hélène expected him, when something struck his ear and brought him to a sudden stand. It was a woman's scream.