XXVIII. THE GUERDON 307 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE I was astonished to see that her face was scarlet, and that she was staring at me with startled eyes _Frontispiece_ A sheet of livid flame leaped upward toward us, and the tower swayed 162 As I looked back I saw a mob of men clambering savagely over the rocks below 180 I strode to the door and flung it wide 266 THE PATH _of_ HONOR CHAPTER I. THE TRAP OF SERGEANT DUBOSQ. DAWN was just breaking as I bade my fat little host at the Beau Visage good-by and, leaving the white streets of Tours behind me, crossed the shallow river and turned my face southward on the pleasant road to Poitiers. The morning was a perfect one, soft and warm, with the shimmer of sunshine and the stirring of green things over the earth; for spring had come again to our fair land of Touraine, and I sat erect in the saddle, drinking long draughts of the good air, riotously, gloriously happy. For I was young, heart-whole, care-free, and setting forth upon a pilgrimage which would have given my father joy had he been alive to know. Yes, and it was the last morning of my life that I could apply to myself those three adjectives--though I did not suspect it then. The way was thronged with market-women hastening toward the town, pushing their little carts before them, their sabots clacking merrily upon the hard, clean road, and their tongues clacking more merrily still. They looked up, with smiling countenances under their white caps, to wish me good-morning and God-speed, and more than once I caught a flash of dark eyes in a fresh and rosy face which sent through me a pang of regret that I could not linger. The broad valley of the river seemed one continued village, so closely were cottages and farmsteads set; but as I pushed forward into the flat country beyond, houses became less frequent, the road grew more and more deserted, and the fields stretched fallow and neglected to left and right as far as the eye could reach. Here and there, indeed, I caught a glimpse of a château veiled by a screen of trees, but the land itself seemed empty of humankind. There were no flocks in the pastures, no peasants in the fields, not a single plow driving a furrow through the waiting soil.