At which the Marquis laughed heartily. It was so amusing to think that one should be young and pretty--and not afraid. In the mean time Barebone was sealing his letter to Captain Clubbe. He had written it in the Suffolk dialect, spelling all the words as they are pronounced on that coast and employing when he could the Danish and Dutch expressions in daily use on the foreshore, which no French official seeking to translate could find in any dictionary. Loo gave his instructions to Jean himself, who received them in a silence not devoid of intelligence. The man had been round the walls and reported that nothing stirred beneath them; that there was more than one fire in the town, and that the streets appeared to be given over to disorder and riot. "It is assuredly a change in the Government," he explained, simply. "And there will be many for Monsieur l'Abbé to bury on Sunday." Jean was to accompany them to the cottage of an old man who had once lived by ferrying the rare passenger across the Gironde. Having left them here, he could reach Blaye before daylight, from whence a passage up the river to Bordeaux would be easily procurable. The boatman's cottage stood on the bank of a creek running into the Gironde. It was a lone building hidden among the low dunes that lie between the river and the marsh. Any one approaching it by daylight would be discernible half an hour in advance, and the man's boat, though old, was seaworthy. None would care to cross the lowlands at night except under the guidance of one or two, who, like Jean, knew their way even in the dark. Colville and Barebone had to help Jean to move the great casks stored in the crypt of the old chapel by which the entrance to the passage was masked. "It is, I recollect having been told, more than a passage--it is a ramp," explained the Marquis, who stood by. "It was intended for the passage of horses, so that a man might mount here and ride out into the mill-stream, actually beneath the mill-wheel which conceals the exit." Juliette, a cloak thrown over her evening dress, had accompanied them and stood near, holding a lantern above her head to give them light. It was an odd scene--a strange occupation for the last of the de Gemosacs. Through the gaps in the toppling walls they could hear the roar of voices and the occasional report of a firearm in the streets of the town below. The door opened easily enough, and Jean, lighting a candle, led the way. Barebone was the last to follow. Within the doorway he turned to say good-bye. The light of the lantern flickered uncertainly on Juliette's fair hair. "We may be back sooner than you expect, mademoiselle," said Barebone. "Or you may go--to England," she answered. CHAPTER XXXIX "JOHN DARBY"