'Very well; then let us go back. It is like to be a fool's errand with such a guide.' My words, and the tone they were uttered in, touched him on the raw, and he swung round. 'I will go, monsieur; this way--to the right.' We turned sharply behind the silently waving arms of a hedge of hornbeam, and it was a relief to find that this cut away all further chance of seeing the pitiful figure at the gates of the inn. Nicholas drew the folds of his frayed cloak over his head, as if to shut out all sound, and hurried onwards--a tall figure, lank and dark, that flitted before me within the shadow of the hedgerow. My horse's knees were hidden by the undergrowth on either side of the winding track, that twined and twisted like a snake under the tangle of grass and weed. This waste over which we passed, grey-green in the moonlight, and swaying in the wind, rolled like a heaving, sighing sea to where it was brought up abruptly by the dark mass of the forest, standing up solidly against the sky as though it were a high coast line. As we forced our way onwards, the swish of the grass was as the churning of water at the bows of a boat, and one could well imagine that the long, shaking plashes of white, mottling the moving surface before us, was caused by the breaking of uneasy water into foam. Of a truth these white plashes were but marguerites. From the warm, dark depths at our feet myriads of grasshoppers shrilled to each other to be of good cheer, and ever and again we heard the sudden plunge and bustle of a startled hare, as it scuttered away in a mad fear at nothing. 'You count your toises long here, Nicholas,' I remarked, for something to say, as we spattered in and out of a shallow pool; and the gnats, asleep on its surface, rose in a brown cloud, and hummed their anger about our ears. 'They are as we reckon them, monsieur. But a few steps further and we will get my horse; and after that there is no difficulty, for I know each track and byepath of these woods.' 'And I wager that many a fat buck has dropped here to your arquebus on moonlight nights such as this.' 'One does not learn the forest for nothing, M. le Chevalier; but the bucks fell lawfully enough. My grandfather came here as huntsman to Madame Diane; my father succeeded him, and I had followed my father; but for the war----' 'And a smart soldier you made. I remember that when I cut you down from a nasty position I had not time then to hear how you came in such plight. How was it? Tell me the truth.' 'I have almost forgotten how to do so. I will try, however, and make it short. When M. le Marquis bore you off after the duel and the escape of the prisoners, the Captain de Gomeron turned on me, and, damning me from head to toe, swore he would flay me to ribbons. Feeling sure he would do so, and careless of the consequences, I answered back--with the result you know. Marked as I was, it was useless to seek employment anywhere, and then I became what I am, and will end on the wheel.'