"From the miscreants it has smelled out," answered the old man grimly, but obeyed; stood as if engrossed in the recollections his own response evoked; then turned; walked on, and, a few moments later, his call, suddenly remembered, rang, belated, in the drowsy air: "Twelve o'clock and all's well! A new day, and St. Aubert guard us all!" "A sword and a blade; A drab and a jade--" The words, scarcely begun, above his breath, died away on the seeming soldier's lips, as the watcher on the bridge, looking down to follow first the departing figure of the old custodian, crossed quickly to the opposite window, and, from this point of vantage, gazed up after the young man rapidly vanishing in the track of the moonlight. A moment the onlooker stood motionless; then, ere the figure, so vividly defined in shine and shimmer, had reached the top of the stairway, made an abrupt movement and swiftly left the window and the passage. At the head of the steps, which without further incident or interruption, he reached, the Black Seigneur, stepping to the shadow of a small bush against the wall, glanced about him; with knit brows and the resolute manner of one who has come to some definite conclusion, he left the spot for observation, almost the apex of the Mount, and plunged diverging to the right. From glint and shimmer to darkness unfathomable! For some time he could only grope and feel his way, after the fashion of the blind; fortunately, however, was the path narrow; although tortuous, fairly well paved, and no serious mishap befell him, even when he walked forward regardlessly, in feverish haste, beset with the conviction that time meant all in all, and delay the closing of the toils and the failure of a desperate adventure. Several times he struck against the stones; once fell hard, but picked himself up; went on the faster, only, after what seemed an interminable period, to stop. "Am I, can I be mistaken?" But the single star he could see plainest from the bottom of the deep alley, and to which he looked up, answered not the fierce, half-muttered question; coldly, enigmatically it twinkled, and, half running, he continued his way, to emerge over-suddenly into a cooler well of air, and--what was more to be welcomed!--an outlook whereof the details were in a measure dimly shadowed forth.