He spoke no less than the truth. There had been a very unpleasant little scene on leaving Vire that morning, from which the Chouan had managed to extricate Anne and himself only by the liberal distribution of bribes. He had been driven to employ the same unsatisfactory method with regard also to their postilion, dismissing him in unusual and suspicious fashion outside Granville. Although the youth (plied in addition by his fare with much strong drink) had promised not to take the empty postchaise into the town, but to return with sealed lips on the road whence he had come, and though his start on that road had actually been witnessed, it was more than probable that he was, at the very moment, back in Granville, if not laying information against his late passengers, at least babbling about them over his cups. Hasty departure was therefore imperative, but the situation of St. Valéry-sur-Somme seemed to be reproduced, with a difference. This time fate (or, in this particular, La Vireville's knowledge) had brought the travellers to a maison de confiance--one of the chain of secret Royalist refuges which stretched along the roads from the coast--had given them a well-disposed fisherman, its master, and a convenient boat, but had denied the wind necessary to the thirty miles that lay between them and Jersey. François, the fisherman in question, shrugged his shoulders again. "Very well, if you insist. You know the risks you are running. If we weather Chausey, we may be blown on to the Minquiers." "My friend," retorted La Vireville, "they are nothing to the risks we run by remaining. I prefer the hospitality of the plateau des Minquiers to that of Granville prison. Shall I give you a hand with the boat?" * * * * * In the little cottage on the shore the fisherman's young wife was sitting with Anne-Hilarion, very drowsy, on her knee. "Monsieur," she said, as her husband and the émigré came in, "it is wicked to take this baby to sea on such a night!" "For that, Madame," replied La Vireville, "you must blame the women who sent him over to France." The young woman kissed the sleepy little boy and rose with him in her arms. "I will carry him down to the boat," she said. "You will have your hands full. There is the water-keg, François, and a basket of provisions. If you get within sight of Jersey this time to-morrow you will be lucky. You have the compass--and the nets?" "Nets!" exclaimed La Vireville. "Ah, I understand." It was as well to have some ostensible reason for being at sea.