"Already it is many weeks since I can dress myself," announced the Comte de Flavigny proudly. "But this is my shirt that I have on. I have no nightshirt. He said it did not matter, but I have never before gone to bed in----" "Never mind," said La Vireville, pitching a few garments on to the bed. They seemed to him ridiculously minute. "How does this go on?" "That is the wrong way round!" observed Anne, so hilariously that the émigré glanced at the open door and put his finger to his lip. Evidently Anne's faith in him was so great that his mere presence was to him the equivalent of safety. "Now wait here a moment in the dark," said La Vireville when, between them, a rapid toilet had been effected. "It is only for an instant." He returned with the lamp to the outer room, satisfied himself that Mme. de Chaulnes's emissary was still soundly unconscious under the counterpane, and, unlocking the door, stole out into the passage and listened. There was neither sound nor light anywhere. He went back to Anne-Hilarion. And, five minutes later, by the simple expedient of letting themselves out of its back door, the Chevalier de la Vireville and his small charge found themselves free of the _Hôtel du Faisan et de la Constitution_, and standing, under the April stars, between high walls in an unsavoury back lane of Abbeville. It was not, indeed, a propitious hour for the walks abroad of a reputable citizen, still less for those of a boy of tender years, but there was now excellent reason why the open air should appeal strongly to them both. Wherefore La Vireville prayed that fate and the darkness should so favour him, that by six or seven o'clock he should find himself at the little port of St. Valéry-sur-Somme, thirteen miles or so down the river, and that there a still further indulgence of the gods would enable him to hire a boat to return across the Channel. For to go back to Boulogne or Calais would be madness, and the chief recommendation of St. Valéry, besides the fact of its being a harbour, was that it lay off all the main roads between those greater ports and Paris. Even then it would be hard enough to get a boat without exciting suspicion. But the Fates had been hitherto so kind that he must go on trusting them. "I shall have to carry you most of the way, child, so I had best begin now," he whispered, and picked up his half-sleepy, half-excited charge. CHAPTER IX THE _TROIS FRÈRES_ OF CAEN