But as darkness came on and cloaked the little troop, and the storm which the men had foreseen began to rumble in the west, his distaste for the business waxed. The summer lightning which presently began to play across the sky revealed not only the broad gleaming stream, between which and a wooded hill their road ran, but the faces of his companions; and these, in their turn, shed a grisly light on the bloody enterprise towards which they were set. Nervous and ill at ease, the minister's mind dwelt on the stages of that enterprise: the stealthy entrance through the waterway, the ascent through the trap, the surprise, the slaughter in the sleeping-chamber. And either because he had lived for days in the victim's company, or was swayed by the arguments he had addressed to another, the prospect shook his soul. In vain he told himself that this was the oppressor; he saw only the man, fresh roused from sleep, with the horror of impending dissolution in his eyes. And when the rider, behind whom he sat, pointed to a faint spark of light, at no great distance before them, and whispered that it was St. Agnes's Chapel, hard by the inn, he could have cried with the best Catholic of them all, "Inter pontem et fontem, Domine!" Nay, some such words did pass his lips. For the man before him turned halfway in his saddle. "What?" he asked. But the Huguenot did not explain. CHAPTER XXIV. AT THE KING'S INN. The Countess sat up in the darkness of the chamber. She had writhed since noon under the stings of remorse; she could bear them no longer. The slow declension of the day, the evening light, the signs of coming tempest which had driven her company to the shelter of the inn at the crossroads, all had racked her, by reminding her that the hours were flying, and that soon the fault she had committed would be irreparable. One impulsive attempt to redeem it she had made; but it had failed, and, by rendering her suspect, had made reparation more difficult. Still, by daylight it had seemed possible to rest content with the trial made; not so now, when night had fallen, and the cries of little children and the haggard eyes of mothers peopled the darkness of her chamber. She sat up, and listened with throbbing temples. To shut out the lightning which played at intervals across the heavens, Madame St. Lo, who shared the room, had covered the window with a cloak; and the place was dark. To exclude the dull roll of the thunder was less easy, for the night was oppressively hot, and behind the cloak the casement was open. Gradually, too, another sound, the hissing fall of heavy rain, began to make itself heard, and to mingle with the regular breathing which proved that Madame St. Lo slept.