"AN ERRAND OF LIFE OR DEATH."

Through the fair, sweet land known as the Département Hérault Martin rode north, toward where the mountains lay, in the darkness of the autumn night, like purple shadows hovering over the earth; rode recklessly, as though caring little whether he or the horse he bestrode found death at the next step. Recklessly, as it seemed to the startled shepherds guarding their flocks of Narbonne sheep in their huts of reeds and clay, and peering out as the horseman dashed by, the moon illuminating his pale face so that, but for the clatter of the creature's hoofs, they would scarcely have known whether 'twas a spectre or a living thing which flew past. Recklessly, too, as it seemed to peasants sleeping in their cottages, and aroused by that clatter only to turn on their beds and sleep again. Recklessly, threateningly, as perhaps it may have seemed to startled fawns and timorous hares and rabbits, fleeing helter-skelter into vineyards where grew the luscious Lunel and Genistoux grapes, or into underbush where lurked the famed and dreaded viper of the south.

But reckless as that hurried course might seem, wild and furious as the ride of Gary from London to Edinburgh, to tell James that the great Queen was dead and he was King of England as well as of Scotland, it was not so in truth, and, though swift and unhalting, was neither foolhardy nor rashly impetuous. He was too good a horseman, also too kindly-hearted a man, to spur a willing beast above its best endeavours. Yet he knew well enough that beyond breathing spells in cool copses, where the moon flung down on to the thick grass the shadowy lacery of leaves which quivered in the night breezes, and beyond halts at trickling rivulets so that the panting creature might drink and be refreshed, there must be no delay. None if he would reach Montrevel or Julien ere the worst had fallen; if he would be in time to tell them that, amid those whom they sought to murder and burn in the caves they had surrounded, was the fairest woman in all Languedoc, the child of Baville's heart, Urbaine Ducaire.

Also he knew the dangers that lurked in his path; knew how, all along the road he went, were countless soldiers out seeking for attroupés; men who, not knowing what his mission was and perceiving that he bore no signs about him of royal scarlet, or lace, or accoutrements, would send a dozen bullets at his back, any one of which would hurl him from his saddle to the ground a corpse. Nay, once such had almost been the case. Refusing to halt at the village of St. Jean le Bon, from a tavern had come a shower of such missiles, which, by God's mercy, had only hissed harmlessly past, though by the shock he felt beneath him he knew that his saddle had been struck.

The dawn was nigh as at last he neared Lunel. He knew it by the deeper chill of the air, by the changing lividness of the summits of the distant mountains, and by the vanishing of the purple darkness from their caps and spurs and ridges. If the horse he rode could reach that town he might get a change of animal and so ride on and on, and on again, until he was within the outlines of Montrevel and Julien.

"Away!" Cavalier had said to him as, after weary waiting, the evening fell over Cette and he was free at last to commence his journey. All day he had fretted and stormed at having to remain until the night came, though forced to do so, since to have started on that wild ride by daylight would have been, in the state of the locality, simply to invite destruction. "Away! God grant you may be in time! If they spare her they must spare the others, as, if they slay them, they must slay her. And--and--we shall be close behind you. If Montrevel and Julien have got into our mountains, may the devil, their master, help them! They will never get out again; we have them in a trap."

And he laughed bitterly while repeating aloud the word "Away!" Also he added, "If you can but induce them to hold their hands for twenty-four hours we will do the rest."

Lunel came nearer and nearer now. He thanked God again and again that still the horse beneath him did not falter, still swept on in an even, easy stride. Already he could see in the morning air, now clear and bright, the great wooden spire of its church, which up to now had escaped destruction. And he remembered how Cavalier had told him to have no fear in entering it, since neither papists nor Protestants had made any attack upon it because it was principally inhabited by Jews from Marseilles, who, from the days of Philip of Valois, had been permitted to dwell within it, they taking, as was natural, no share in the troubles with which the province was torn.

Nearer and nearer, close now, its one peaked, calotte-roofed tower, which faced to the south, standing up like an arrow pointing to the sky in the cool light of the swift advancing dawn.

Close now, and hammering on the great gray storm-beaten door of the ramparts, against which for centuries the mistral and the bise had howled and flung themselves on winter nights and days; on which all through the summer the southern sun had glared. Hammering with pistol-butt and clenched hand, loud enough to arouse the dead, and calling:

"Awake! Open! Open! In God's name open!"

"Hola!" a voice shouted answeringly from within. "No more. Cease. I come! 'In God's name.' Good! You give the password. 'Tis well!" the utterance being mingled with the grating of a key in a lock and the rumbling of a bar. And Martin divined that by a chance, a miracle, he had uttered the royalist sign.

A moment later the gate was open wide. Before it stood a lean, gray-haired warder, the very counterpart of Cervante's hero, fastening the tags of his jacket with one hand as he threw back the door with the other.

"Monsieur rides in haste," he said, seeing that he had a gentleman to do with, though no soldier clad in bleu royal or scarlet, as he had expected. "What is the news you carry? Have the accursed English landed, the vile Protestants captured the port?"

"Nay," answered Martin, "but I ride on an errand of life or death. I must reach Baville; above all, Montrevel or Julien. They know not what they do."

"What they do! What is't? I have heard they barricade themselves in Uzès and Alais, yet thousands strong! Soldiers! Bah! Tosspots and vauriens, afraid of a beggarly set of goatherds. Dieu des Dieux! 'twas not so when I rode behind Condé."

"You are mistaken. They are in the mountains, putting all to fire and sword. Above all, to fire. And among those whom they will slay--they know her not--is Baville's child. Friend, as you have loved ones of your own, help me to a fresh horse. This one is spent."

"It is," the warder said, all action now and regarding the smoking flanks of the poor beast. "Antoine, petit," he called, "out of your bed, dindon. A bucket of water, quick. And for you, monsieur, a sup," whereon he ran into his lodge and came back carrying a great outre, from out of which he poured a flask of amber-coloured liquor. "'Tis of the best," he said, and winked as he did so. "Hein! 'tis Chastelneuf. Three years in vat. Down with it."

"Another horse, another horse!" Martin exclaimed after he had swallowed the wine and thanked the man. "In Heaven's name put me in the way of that. I must on--on."

"Off!" said the man to a boy who had now come from his lodge, half dressed, as though he had but just tumbled out of his bed; a boy who was by now holding a bucket to the horse's thirsty mouth. "Off, Antoine, to the Jew. He has the cattle. If you have money," he added to Martin. "Without it you will get naught from any of his tribe."

"I have enough. Fifty gold pistoles."

"Show them not to him, or he will want all. Bargain, traffic, marchandise. 'Tis the only way."

Led by the boy and leading now the steed, with the warder calling after him that it was strange he had heard naught of what he related, "for his part, he believed he was misinformed, and that Montrevel and Julien were doing nothing but eating and drinking up all in the land like locusts," Martin wen............