"Doubtless," said Sylvia, "it is best we go alone, apart. Thus, if one is stopped, the other may escape, may be able to continue the attempt alone. Ah! Radegonde, if we should succeed! If we should be in time to save him!" "Ay! 'tis that. If we should be in time! Yet time is one's best friend! They will not try him yet. They cannot. Except at the citadel and in the Chartreuse, Liége is almost denuded of troops for the moment. There are not enough officers to try him now, and--and--I know it, am sure of it--De Violaine will not advance matters. Oh! Sylvia, we must succeed." So now they made all plans for ensuring their success, and decided that, on the next morning after this conversation, those plans should be put into execution. Fortunately one thing--money--was not wanting to aid them. That next morning broke wet and stormy; the rain poured down at intervals, though followed, also at intervals, by slight cessations in the downpour, and by transient gleams of sunshine. Owing to which the peasant women who had sold their fowls and eggs and vegetables, as well as those who had been less successful, were forced to cower under antique stoops around the markets or under the market roofs themselves, or to trudge away in their heavy sabots--which, at least, served to keep their feet dry--towards the gates and out into the open country. Amongst others who were doing the latter was a tall, fine peasant girl whose eyes, gleaming out from beneath the coarse shawl thrown over her head, belied, in their sombre gravity, the old Walloon song she hummed as she went along. A tall, fine girl, who, with her basket over her arm, splashed through the mud and slush until she reached the northeast gate and asked the corporal, who stood carefully out of the rain, if he did not require a fowl for his _pot-au-feu_ or some eggs for his midday meal. "If I had a wife like you to cook them for me!" the Frenchman gallantly replied. "But, tell me, are all the girls from Herstal as handsome as you?" "Handsomer," the peasant girl replied lightly. "My sister to wit. Buy some eggs from me, corporal." [Illustration: "Seeing a strange look in the girl's eyes, he changed the word he was about to utter"--_p_. 852.] "I have no money, and eggs are dear here now. Give me one for----" Then, seeing a strange look in the girl's eyes, he changed the word he was about to utter into "luck." But since the peasant was now outside the gate it may be that, even if he had said "love" instead "luck," it would have made little difference to her. For she was out of Liége; she was free--free to begin her efforts, her attempt, mad as it might be, to rescue the one man on earth with whom and whose name the word and meaning of love could ever be associated in her mind.