My face flushed hotly. But I cried, "What of that? You were taken by treachery! Your safe conduct was disregarded. Why should you be scrupulous? Your enemies are not. This is folly?" "I think not. Nay," Louis answered, shaking his head, "you would not do it yourself in my place." "I think I should," I stammered awkwardly. "No, you would not, lad," he said smiling. "I know you too well. But if I would do it, it is impossible." He turned in the saddle and, shading his eyes with his hand from the level rays of the sun, looked back intently. "It is as I thought," he continued. "One of those men is riding grey Margot, which Bure said yesterday was the fastest mare in the troop. And the man on her is a light weight. The other fellow has that Norman bay horse we were looking at this morning. It is a trap laid by Bezers, Anne. If we turned aside a dozen yards, those two would be after us like the wind." "Do you mean," I cried, "that Bezers has drawn his men forward on purpose?" "Precisely;" was Louis's answer. "That is the fact. Nothing would please him better than to take my honour first, and my life afterwards. But, thank God, only the one is in his power." And when I came to look at the horsemen, immediately before us, they confirmed Louis's view. They were the best mounted of the party: all men of light weight too. One or other of them was constantly looking back. As night fell they closed in upon us with their usual care. When Bure joined us there was a gleam of intelligence in his bold eyes, a flash of conscious trickery. He knew that we had found him out, and cared nothing for it. And the others cared nothing. But the thought that if left to myself I should have fallen into the Vidame's cunning trap filled me with new hatred towards him; such hatred and such fear--for there was humiliation mingled with them--as I had scarcely felt before. I brooded over this, barely noticing what passed in our company for hours--nay, not until the next day when, towards evening, the cry arose round me that we were within sight of Cahors. Yes, there it lay below us, in its shallow basin, surrounded by gentle hills. The domes of the cathedral, the towers of the Vallandre Bridge, the bend of the Lot, where its stream embraces the town--I knew them all. Our long journey was over. And I had but one idea. I had some time before communicated to Croisette the desperate design I had formed--to fall upon Bezers and kill him in the midst of his men in the last resort. Now the time had come if the thing was ever to be done: if we had not left it too long already. And I looked about me. There was some confusion and jostling as we halted on the brow of the hill, while two men were despatched ahead to announce the governor's arrival, and Bure, with half a dozen spears, rode out as an advanced guard.