[1] A _chevauchée_ was an expedition to ravage a tract of country. Originally it signified a feudal service due from a vassal to his seigneur in private wars. Then suddenly she threw away the hammer and spread her arms as might a bird preparing to fly, bent her lithe form as might a cricket to leap. "Stand aside! Go back! 'Ware, I am coming!" The lad hastily beat a retreat down the steps. He could do no other. Each step was but two feet in length from the rock. There was no handrail; no two persons could pass on it. Moreover, the impetus of the girl, if she leaped from one foothold to the next, and the next, and then again to the stair where undamaged, would be prodigious; she would require the way clear that she might descend bounding, swinging down the steep flight, two stages at a leap, till she reached the bottom. An obstruction would be fatal to her, and fatal to him who stood in her way. No word of caution, no dissuasion was of avail. In her attitude, in the flash of her eyes, in the tone of her voice, in the thrill that went through her agile frame, Jean saw that the leap was inevitable. He therefore hastened to descend, and when he reached the bottom, turned to see her bound. He held his breath. The blood in his arteries stood still. He set his teeth, and all the muscles of his body contracted as with the cramp. He saw her leap. Once started, nothing could arrest her. On her left hand was the smooth face of the rock, without even a blade of grass, a harebell, a tuft of juniper growing out of it. On her right was void. If she tripped, if she missed her perch, if she miscalculated her weight, if she lost confidence for one instant, if her nerve gave way in the slightest, if she was not true of eye, nimble of foot, certain in judging distance, then she would shoot down just as had the logs she had cast below. As certainly as he saw her fall would Jean spring forward in the vain hope of breaking her fall, as certainly to be struck down and perish with her. One--a whirl before his eyes. As well calculate her leaps as count the spokes in a wheel as it revolves on the road. One--two--three--thirty--a thousand--nothing! "There, clown!" She was at the bottom, her hands extended, her face flushed with excitement and pleasure. "You see--what I can dare and do." CHAPTER II. WHO IS THE FOOL NOW? THERE boiled up in the youth's heart a feeling of wrath and indignation against the girl who in sheer wantonness had imperiled her life and had given to him a moment of spasm of apprehension. Looking full into her glittering brown eyes, he said-- "You have cast at me ill names. I have been to you but clown and fool; I have done nothing to merit such titles; I should never have thrown a thought away on you, but have gone on scraping my shaft, had not you done a silly thing--a silly thing. Acted like a fool, and a fool only!"