she was sitting in his cowhouse,
one early April day, about seven weeks since her evasion from the
convent.

'Not so, I hope, Madame, but I do not feel at ease. Monsieur has not
sent for me, nor told me his plans for the morrow, and I much doubt me
whether that bode not a search here. Now I see a plan, provided Madame
would trust herself to a Huguenot.'

'They would guard me for my husband's sake.'

'And could Madame walk half a league, as far as the Grange du Temple?
There live Matthieu Rotrou and his wife, who have, they say, baffled
a hundred times the gendarmes who sought their ministers. No one ever
found a pastor, they say, when Rotrou had been of the congregation; and
if they can do so much for an old preacher with a long tongue, surely
they can for a sweet young lady; and if they could shelter her just for
tomorrow, till the suspicion is over, then would I come for Madame with
my cart, and carry her into Chollet among the trusses of hay, as we had
fixed.'

Eustacie was already tying her cloak, and asking for Lucette; but
she was grieved to hear that Martin had sent her to vespers to disarm
suspicion, and moreover that he meant not to tell her of his new device.
'The creature is honest enough,' he said, 'but the way to be safe with
women is not to let them know.'

He cut short all messages and expressions of gratitude, and leading
Eustacie to a small stream, he made her creep along its course, with her
feet in the water so as to be sheltered by the boughs that hung over the
banks, while he used his ling strides to enable him to double back
and enter into conversation with passers-by, quite of the track of the
Grange du Temple, but always telling her where he should join her again,
and leaving with her the great dog, whom she had come to regard as a
friend and protector. Leaving the brook, he conducted her beneath hedges
and by lonely woodland paths beyond the confines of her own property,
to a secluded valley, so shut in by wooded hills that she had not been
aware of its existence. Through an extensive orc