them less confusedly, he marked the lumbering walk of the man. He wore a round soft hat, and a big overcoat against the freshness of the night air, and had the air of a familiar upper servant. At his side, with an upright gait and a certain poise of the head that Fersen knew, alas! for him, better than anything else on earth, went the woman. Fersen went forward, mastering his respect, and led them to the carriage; and then, without delay, but still careful to give no cause for remark by his haste, he drove northward over the noisy granite sets of the streets. By what tortuous ways Fersen drove the king and his family one may hardly guess. They were puzzled to find him following many street turnings other than those that would lead them to the nearest gate of the city on the north and so to the great frontier road. But Fersen did what he did knowingly. It was his business in this turn of the night to make sure that the last point of his plan had been obeyed and that the great travelling-carriage had gone on before and was waiting for them outside the limits of the city. He called at the stables and found one trusted servant of his to assure him that the thing had been sent and that all was ready. Then only did he turn toward the east and the north and make for the barrier at the end of the Rue St. Martin, which was then the gate of Paris and the beginning of straggling houses and the open country. They did not reach that barrier till two o’clock. Already they breathed some faint air of morning. No one challenged them. It was one cab like another, driving to the suburbs with some belated middle-class party that had dined in Paris that night. There were lights and music still in the house of the gate-keeper at the barrier, for there had been a wedding in his family that day, and they were feasting. After the glare of that light, Fersen looked in vain through the night for the Berline. Then, with some few minutes so lost, he saw the black hump at last, drawn up well to the right and close to the bordering ditch. The guardsman, Moustier, and Balthazar, his own coachman, were sitting their horses immovable. They had waited thus immovable for some hours. Very rapidly the travellers passed from the cab to the coach, and leaned back in the comfortable white velvet cushions of its upholstering. Fersen himself, sending back the cab I know not how, took his place upon the broad box of the Berline, and the four horses felt the traces and started. The journey had begun. Toward the north-east, to which the great road ran, there was already a hint of dawn, and great Paris just behind would not sleep long into the light. Therefore the horses, Fersen’s own, with only a short stage before them, were urged to a vigorous pace through the short, lonely suburb and still more lonely fields beyond, and Fersen’s coachman, who rode as postillion upon the leader, spared them little.