"
"Why, then, we will court murder," said I coldly. "Give the word
to saddle."
I asked him at the moment of setting out did he know the road to
Lavedan, to which the lying poltroon made answer that he did. In
his youth he may have known it, and the countryside may have
undergone since then such changes as bewildered him. Or it may be
that fear dulled his wits, and lured him into taking what may have
seemed the safer rather than the likelier road. But this I know,
that as night was falling my carriage halted with a lurch, and as
I put forth my head I was confronted by my trembling intendant, his
great fat face gleaming whitely in the gloom above the lawn collar
on his doublet.
"Why do we halt, Ganymede?" quoth I.
"Monseigneur," he faltered, his trembling increasing as he spoke,
and his eyes meeting mine in a look of pitiful contrition, "I fear
we are lost."
"Lost?" I echoed. "Of what do you talk? Am I to sleep in the coach?"
"Alas, monseigneur, I have done my best--"
"Why, then, God keep us from your worst," I snapped. "Open me this
door."
I stepped down and looked about me, and, by my faith, a more desolate
spot to lose us in my henchman could not have contrived had he been
at pains to do so. A bleak, barren landscape - such as I could
hardly have credited was to be found in all that fair province -
unfolded itself, looking now more bleak, perhaps, by virtue of the
dim evening mist that hovered over it.
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