Something after high noon des Ageaux appeared and, whatever the Abbess's feelings, he was overjoyed to find the three undisturbed. He despatched a flying party down the valley that he might have notice if the enemy approached, and then he bent himself to remove the Duke in safety to his camp. In this the Abbess had her own line to take, and took it with decision. She represented the patient as worse than he was, described the fever as still lingering upon him, and using the authority which her devotion of the night gave her, she insisted that the Duke should see no one. A kind of shelter from the sun was woven of boughs, and placed over the litter. He was then lifted and borne out with care, the Abbess walking on one side, and her woman on the other. In the open air des Ageaux would have approached and spoken to him, for between gratitude and remorse the Lieutenant was much touched. But the authority of the sick-nurse was great then as it is now. The Abbess repelled him firmly, and, refusing the horse which had been brought for her, she persisted in walking the whole distance to the camp--a full league--by the side of the litter. In this way she fenced others off, and the Duke had her always before him. Always the opening at the side of the litter framed her face.

She gave her mind so completely to him that she took no note of their route, save that they kept the valley, which preserving its flat bottom now ran between hills of a wilder aspect. It was only when the troopers, at a word from the Lieutenant, closed in about the litter, that she observed--though it had been some time in sight--the object which caused the movement. This was a small hill-town, girt by a ruinous wall, and buckled with crazy towers, which topped an acclivity on the right of the valley, and commanded the road. The suspicion with which her escort regarded the place did not surprise her when she remarked the filthy forms and wild and savage faces which swarmed upon the wall. There were women and children as well as men in the place, and all, ragged and half naked, mopped and mowed at the passers, or, leaping to their feet, defied them with unspeakable words and gestures.

The Abbess looked at them with daunted eyes. There was something inhuman in their squalor and wildness. "Who are they?" she asked.

"Crocans," the nearest rider answered.

"But we are not going to them?" she returned in astonishment. She had heard that they were bound for the peasants' camp, and her lip had curled at the information. But if these were Crocans--horror!

The man spat on the ground. "That is one band, and ours is another," he replied. "All canaille, but--not all like that, or we had some strange bed-fellows indeed!"

He would have said more, but he caught the Lieutenant's eye, and was silent and five minutes later the Abbess saw a strange sight. The riders before her wheeled to the left, and, bending low in their saddles, vanished bodily in the rock that walled the road on that side.

A moment later she probed the mystery. In the rock wall which fenced the track on the left, as the river fenced it on the right, was an arched opening, resembling the mouth of a cave--of one of those caves so common in the Limousin. Within was no cave, however, but a spacious circus of smooth green turf open to the heaven, though walled on every side by grassy slopes which ran steeply to a height of a hundred feet. There was no entrance to the basin, but neither its defensible strength, nor the wisdom of the Crocans in choosing it, was apparent until the green rampart cast about it by nature was examined and found to be so scarped on the outer side as to form here a sheer precipice, there a descent trying to the most active foot.

A spring near the inner margin of this natural amphitheatre fed a rivulet which, after passing across it, and dividing it into two unequal parts, escaped to the river through the rocky gateway.

The smaller portion of the sward thus divided, a portion raised very slightly above the rest, had something of the aspect of a stage on a great scale. About its middle a flat-topped rock rising to a man's height from the ground had the air of an altar, and this was shaded by the only tree in the enclosure, a single plane-tree of vast size, which darkened with its ancient smooth-barked limbs a half-acre of ground. Probably this rock and this tree had witnessed the meetings of some primitive people, had borne part in their human sacrifices, and echoed the cries with which they acclaimed the moment of the summer solstice.

To-day this basin, long abandoned to the solitude of the hills, presented once more a scene of turmoil, such as for strangeness might rival the gatherings of that remote age. Nor, save for a circumstance presently to be named, could even the Abbess's sullen curiosity have withheld a meed of admiration as the panorama unfolded itself before her.

Round the edge of the larger half of the amphitheatre ran a long line--in parts double and treble, of booths open at the front, and formed, some of branches of trees, some of plaited rushes or osier. Under these, swarms of men, women, and children lounged in every posture, while others strolled about the ground before the sheds, which, crowded with sheep, oxen and horses, wore the aspect of a rustic fair. The turf that had been so fair a fortnight before was trodden bare in places, and in others poached and stained by the crowds that moved on it. Only the immediate bank of the rivulet had been kept clear.

The smaller portion of the sward had been given up to des Ageaux and his band of troopers and refugees. A dozen horses tethered in an orderly row at the rear of the plane-tree, with a pile of gear at the head of each, spoke of military order, as did the three or four booths which had been erected for the accommodation of the Vicomte's party. But as in such a place and under such circumstances it was impossible to enforce strict discipline, the curious among the peasants, and not men only, but women and children, roved in small parties on this side also, staring and questioning; some with furtive eyes as expecting a trap and treachery, others watching in clownish amazement the evolutions of a picked band of three score peasants whom the Bat was beginning to instruct in the use of their weapons and in the simplest movements of the field. Here and there on the steep slopes about the saucer were groups of peasants; and on the top of the ridge, which was forbidden to the crowd, were five sentinels, stationed beside as many cairns of stones piled for the purpose at fixed distances from one another. These were of the Lieutenant's institution, for though the safety of the camp hung wholly on the command of its natural battlement, which captured would convert the basin into a death-trap, the Crocans had kept no regular guard on it. He on his arrival had entrusted its oversight to the two young Villeneuves, and one or the other was ever patrolling the length of the vallum, or from the highest point searching the chaos of uninhabited hills and glens that stretched on every side.

This hasty sketch of the scene leaves to be fancied those worst traits of the camp, of its wildness and savagery, that could not fail to disquiet the mind even of a bold woman. Many of the peasants were half naked, others were clad in cow-skins, in motley armour, in sordid, blood-stained finery. All went unshaven, and many had long, filthy elf-locks hanging about their faces, and ragged beards reaching to their girdles. Some had squalid bandages on head or limb, and all were armed grotesquely with bill-hooks or scythes, or with stakes pointed and hardened in the fire, or with knotty clubs. M. de Vlaye and his kind would have seen in them only a horde to be exterminated without pity or remorse. Nor could their looks have failed to startle the Abbess, high as was her natural courage--if a thing had not at the very entrance engaged her attention.

For there, under the archway, a group of six men sat on their hams, their backs against the rock. And these were so foul in garb, and repulsive in aspect, that the common peasants of the camp seemed by comparison civilised. The Abbess shuddered at the mere look of them, and would have averted her eyes if they had not, as des Ageaux entered, risen and barred the way. The foremost, a tall, meagre figure with a long white beard, and the gleam of madness in his eyes, seized the Lieutenant's bridle and raising his other hand seemed to forbid his entrance. "Give us," he cried in a strange patois, "our man! Our man!"

The Abbess expected des Ageaux to strike him from his path, or bid his men ride him down. But the Lieutenant considered with patience the strange figure clad much as John the Baptist is portrayed in pictures, and when he answered he spoke calmly. "You are from the town on the hill?" he said.

"Ay, and we claim our man!"

"The man, you mean, whom we took from your hands last night?"

"Ay, that man!"

"For what?"

"That we may burn him," the savage answered, his face lit up by a gleam of frightful cruelty. "That we may do to him as he has done to us and our little ones. That we may burn him as he and his have burned us, from father to son, father to son, by the light of our own thatch. They have smoked us in our holes," he continued with ferocity, "as they smoke foxes; and we will smoke him. He has done to us that! And that!" He turned, and at a sign two of his five fellows stepped forward and held aloft the maimed and ghastly stumps of their arms. "And that! And that!" Again two stepped forward and pointed to their eyeless sockets. "And what he has done to us we will do to him!"

The Abbess turned sick at the sight. But des Ageaux answered with quietness. "Yet what has he done to you, old man," he asked, "that you stand foremost?"

"He has blinded me there!" the madman answered, and with a strangely dramatic gesture pointed to his brow. "I am dark at times, and boys mock me! But to-day I am whole and well!"

"I will not give him up to you!" the Lieutenant replied with calm decision. "But if he has done the things of which you tell me, I will judge him myself and punish him. Nay"--staying them sternly as they began to cry out upon him, "listen to me now! I have listened to you. For all who come in to me, and cease from pillage, and burning, and murder. I give my warrant that the past shall be overlooked. They shall be free to go back to their villages, or if they dare not go back they shall be settled elsewhere, with pardon for life and limb. But for those who do not come in, the burden of all will fall upon them! The law will pass upon them without mercy, and their gibbets will be on every road!"

"Not so!" the other cried, raising himself to his full height and flinging his lean arms to heaven. "Not so, lord, for the time is full! Hear me, too, man of blood. We know you. You speak softly because the time is full, and you would fain cast in your lot with us and escape. But you are of those who ride in blood, and who trust in the strength of your armour, and who eat of the fat and drink of the strong, while the poor man perishes under the feet of your horses, while the earth groans under the load of your wickedness, and God is mocked. But the time is full, and there comes an end of your gyves and your gibbets, your wheels and your molten lead! The fire is kindled that shall burn you. Is there one of you for ten of us? Can your horses bear you through the sea when the fire fills all the land? Nay, three months have we burned all ways, and no man has been able to withstand our fire! For it grows! It grows!"

The fierce murmurings of the madman's fellows almost drowned des Ageaux' voice when he went to answer. "Your blood be on your own heads!" he said solemnly. "I have spoken you fairly, I have given you the choice of good and of evil."

"Nought but evil," the other cried, "can proceed out of your mouth! Now give us our man!"

"Never!"

"Then will we burn you for him," the madman shrieked, in sudden frenzy, "when you fall into our hands. You and these--women with breasts of flint and hearts of the rock-core, who bathe in the blood of our infants, and make a holiday of our torments! Beware, for when next we meet, you die!"

"Be it so!" des Ageaux replied, sternly restraining his men, who would have fallen on the hideous group. "But begone!"

They turned away, mopping and mowing--one was a leper--and lifting hands of imprecation. And the Abbess, while the litter was being lifted, was left for a moment with des Ageaux. She hated him, but she did not understand him; and it was the desire to understand him that led her to speak.

"Why did you not seize the wretches," she asked, "............