“The moon’s up and it’s time to start. No more of this good-by business, or it’ll be good-by for good,” he said, as they all stood at the cottage door, the pine-filled air from the forest blowing about them. Grigge spoke to his aunt. “You’d best go to the hut and stay if there’s trouble. You’ll be safe enough there,” he said, and he did not sneer as was his wont. There was a dignity about him that none of them had seen before. He was risking his life for people whom he despised, and he was doing it for the sake of a friend. Perhaps, sometime, he would do the like for sheer love of his brother man. At any rate, he had taken the first step in that direction. They were off at last, all of them in the great roomy coach, Bertran and Grigge sitting beside the driver. The horses, after a good rest and feed, went like the wind itself! It seemed as though they knew that danger lay behind! The girls and the governess were tired and bewildered and heartsick. They could think of nothing but Marie Josephine. Finally, after they had thought and said all that they could about the runaways, Denise remarked: “It’s so wonderful to think they dared to go to Paris. The road is direct enough and Marie Josephine knows it well by coach, but little Jean knows nothing.” “I teased him once because he had never been anywhere, and he said some day he was going to visit his cousins near Melon,” said Bertran. The driver turned and looked at him. “Melon—let me see—Melon. Why, I took in two children the other day. They seemed dead beat out, and slept all day in the back of the coach. The boy told me, in the evening, that he had cousins near Melon!” The exclamations and the questions were so numerous that Champar was sorry he had spoken. “Stop and tell us at once. We must know about the children going to Melon,” they begged, but he paid not the slightest attention to their entreaties and only urged the horses to go faster. He intended driving all night, and it was not until he stopped to rest the horses before they took a hill, that he spoke again at all.