"A dog of character evidently!" The new acquaintance considered the matter gravely. "When are you crossing?" he asked.
"To-morrow," said Jack. "I'm sorry, Chris, but I came off in a hurry, as matters seemed urgent, and I have to be back by the end of the week."
"I wonder if you would care to entrust your dog to me," said Mordaunt. "I am fairly well known. I think I could be relied upon with safety to hoodwink the authorities."
He made the suggestion with a smile that warmed Chris's desolate heart. Not till long afterwards did she know that this man had crossed the Channel only that day, and that he proposed to re-cross it on the morrow because of the trouble in a child's eyes that had moved him to compassion.
They spent the next half-hour in an engrossing discussion as to the best means to be adopted for Cinders' safe transit, and when Chris went to bed at last she was so full of the scheme that she forgot after all to cry herself to sleep over the thought of her _preux chevalier_ drawing his sand-pictures in solitude.
She dreamed instead that he and the Englishman with the level, grey eyes were fighting a duel that lasted interminably, neither giving ground, till suddenly Bertrand plunged his sword into the earth and abruptly walked away.
She tried to follow him, but could not, for something held her back. And so presently he passed out of her sight, and turning, she found that the Englishman had gone also, and she was alone.
The angry yelling of a French mob rose outside the court--a low, ominous roar, pierced here and there with individual execrations, and the prisoner turned his head and listened. There was a suspicion of contempt on his face, drawn though it was. What did they care for justice? It was only the instinct to hunt the persecuted that urged them. Were he proved innocent ten times over, they would hardly be convinced or cease from their reviling.
But he knew that no proof of innocence would be forthcoming. He was hedged around too completely by adverse circumstances for that. Everything pointed to his guilt, and only he himself and one other knew him to be the victim of a deliberate plot devised to compass his destruction. He was too hopelessly enmeshed to extricate himself, and the other--the only man in the world who could establish his innocence--was the man who had set the snare.