In the midst of the business of hiring another horse, he suddenly remembered Elspeth, and wondered that he had not thought of her before. She must know something. But where was she? Had they shipped her off too? It seemed unlikely--yet equally unlikely was it that they had either left her free to hurry back to London with her tale, or had made away with her. They had probably arranged for a temporary disappearance. If he looked for her he would waste the time on which so much depended, and even if he found her she would not, probably, be able to tell him a great deal. And so La Vireville, whose life of late years had taught him the faculty of quick decision, resolved not to pursue that trail. He wrote at the inn a letter to Mr. Elphinstone, explaining what he was about to do, made arrangements for it to be taken by special messenger to London, and, in a quarter of an hour or so, on a fresh horse, was galloping through the rainy night along the Dover road. BOOK TWO THE ROAD TO ENGLAND "O they rade on, and farther on, And they waded rivers abune the knee; And they saw neither sun nor moon, But they heard the roaring of the sea." _THOMAS THE RHYMER._ CHAPTER VIII SOME RESULTS OF LISTENING TO POETRY (1) Mathieu Pourcelles had now definitely become a nuisance to the habitués of that old-established house of entertainment, the _Hôtel du Faisan et de la Constitution_ at Abbeville. To the patron indeed he was more than a nuisance; he was a source of frenzy. But since Mathieu's elder brother, the notary, was the patron's creditor to the extent of some two thousand francs, the patron had to suffer him, and all the clients of the _Faisan_ had to suffer him too--unless they removed their custom to another hostelry. And this, to be exact, was what they were gradually doing, for there are limits even to the patience of a decent citizen who has for years played his nightly little game of draughts at the same tavern and does not favour changes. It shall briefly be revealed what was the matter with Mathieu Pourcelles. He was a poet. Nor was he a good poet; nay, not even an indifferent poet. But his muse was both prolific and patriotic, giving birth to some abortion at almost every public event, and though all good citizens of Abbeville were properly interested in such occurrences as, say, the repeal of the Law of the Maximum, they preferred a plain newspaper account of it to Mathieu's rhythmical rendering. Yet if they showed undue restiveness under the poet's outpourings it was just conceivable that, seeing the subject of his verse, they might be suspected of 'incivisme.' And thus there was little help for them.