Meanwhile, refreshed by the air and movement, the frenzied Gabrielle seemed to have wings upon her feet, as she clenched her hands and kept repeating with laboured breath, "I will live--live--live." Her mind was preternaturally clear--she could see with prophetic vision, and grapple with contingencies. She saw the wall and knew she could not pass it; guessed that the gates were guarded; but remembering a certain night, which seemed a century ago, when she had wickedly attempted suicide, she made with all speed for the end of the moat, at the spot where it joined the river. The wherry was there, swinging loosely and idly on its chain. She leapt into the boat and loosed the knotted links, and, accustomed to use the oars, impelled it across the river. By this happy thought she gained precious time, could take a short cut to Montbazon, and might yet be saved; for her pursuers, deprived of the boat, would have to make a circuit of a mile or more in order to reach the bridge. She would be saved--she knew she would be saved--and then there fell on her a cold and sickening fear. Her limbs were trembling. She was growing giddy; her sight was wavering--the sky looked brown and dark. Was she doomed to sink down and perish when escape was all but certain? She tottered along the path, and groping on for a few steps with outstretched arms like one struck blind, reeled and fell, moaning. The singing in her ears was deafening--like the howling of a hurricane through some dense forest; but through it she all at once heard something--a voice that was once familiar. Raising with an effort her heavy eyelids, she was aware of a man with a horse's bridle on his arm, who was supporting her and sprinkling water on her face. She was certainly growing blind as well as giddy. The man loomed unnaturally large, and seemed at one instant crushingly close, at another a league away. Grasping the strands of memory which, crystalline no more, was slipping, slipping, she knitted her brows in a wild effort to remember him. "As I'm a living sinner, 'tis the marquise," the man said, when he had recovered from his amazement. "Poor soul! In so terrible a plight. Only just in time, it seems." Jean! Jean Boulot! Gabrielle suddenly remembered, and tightly clutched his hand. "Jean--dear Jean!" she gasped. "Save me! I am poisoned, but I will not die; I must not, cannot die. They are in pursuit--will kill us both. Quick--for love of the dear saints--take me at once to Montbazon!" Jean pursed his lips, and frowned. "How like the wickedness of aristos!" he muttered. "It is time their evil brood was banished from off the world. Poisoned, you say, madame. What was it?" "Hemlock," she answered, faintly; "but I have got rid of most of it." "Hemlock," Jean echoed; "the children hereabouts often eat it, and are saved by tea and charcoal. Courage, madame, all will yet be well. One word more. What of Toinon?"