'
'You want to kill her, too, I suppose?' he answered glowering at
me.
'No, fool, I want to save her,' I retorted wrathfully. 'Tell her
that, just that and no more, and you will see the result.'
'I shall not,' he said sullenly. 'A message from you indeed!'
And he spat on the ground.
'Then on your head be it,' I answered solemnly, And I turned my
horse's head and galloped fast after the others. But I felt sure
that he would report what I had said, if it were only out of
curiosity; and it would be strange if Madame, a gentlewoman of
the south, bred among old family traditions, did not understand
the reference.
And so we began our journey; sadly, under dripping trees and a
leaden sky. The country we had to traverse was the same I had
trodden on the last day of my march southwards, but the passage
of a month had changed the face of everything. Green dells,
where springs welling out of the chalk had once made of the leafy
bottom a fairies' home, strewn with delicate ferns and hung with
mosses, were now swamps into which our horses sank to the
fetlock. Sunny brews, whence I had viewed the champaign and
traced my forward path, had become bare, wind-swept ridges.
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