"Come, brother," the leader was saying, when Dick at last looked up. "Choose a sword. I hear the carriage at the gate." Before he had recovered from his bewilderment, Dick was passing through the rain, towards the gate, clasping one of the swords tightly beneath his coat. At his right arm was the leader, who carried one of the other two swords, as well as a pistol in each outer pocket; at the left arm was a second man, similarly armed. Two other men mounted the coachman's place. "Which way, monsieur?" said one of these latter, in joking imitation of a driver, when Dick and his guards were seated in the dark carriage. "The road to Paris," said the leader, and drew the coach door after him with a bang. CHAPTER XVII. "STONE WALLS DO NOT A PRISON MAKE." The chill and rainy afternoon gave way to an evening as rainy and more chill. The carriage rolled southward, past St. Ouen, and still on. Those inside spoke not a word. The men on the coachman's seat protected themselves from the rain with their cloaks as best they could, and uttered no complaint. Dick could see nothing through the carriage window, against the dark sky, but the darker forms of trees and buildings gliding by. He had too much else on his mind to appreciate the fact that he was at last about to enter Paris, the goal of his dream-journeys in childhood. At first he was in a kind of stupor, and felt like one hurled through increasing darkness towards blackest night, there to meet annihilation. Then his mind began to work, and soon was in a whirl. Assassination,--he shrank from it with disgust and horror. The alternative, death,--he recoiled from the idea, as youth and hope ever must recoil. Was there no middle course? He racked his brain to find one; he found it not, yet still he racked his brain. It was quite dark now, and they had passed the outer barrier without Dick's noting the fact. But the houses, now close together and of different character from those of the village of La Chapelle, indicated that the carriage must be in the faubourg, at least. Presently Dick perceived that they were passing beneath a great arch (it was the Porte St. Denis, erected under Louis XIV., though Dick knew it not); then that they turned to the right, and, a minute later, obliquely to the left, finally proceeding along a slightly narrower street than they had already traversed. A movement on the part of the man at his right seemed to indicate that the destination was near at hand. They were indeed in the Rue Clery, and approaching the Rue du Petit Carreau, although the dark streets were nameless to Dick. Suddenly he had an idea. He gave a start, as if he had awakened from a feverish sleep. "Messieurs," he said, in a half terrified tone, "I have had a remarkable dream, a wonderfully vivid one, though I have not for a moment lost sense of my being with you in this carriage." "It is the time for acts now, not for dreams," said the leader of the Brotherhood.