time before he could continue.
"`After them, my men,' shouts the captain," he said after a while,

"`remember the reward; after them, they cannot have gone far!'
And with that he rushes through the gate followed by his dozen soldiers."

"But it was too late!" shouted the crowd, excitedly.
"They never got them!"

"Curse that Grospierre for his folly!"
"He deserved his fate!"

"Fancy not examining those casks properly!"
But these sallies seemed to amuse Citoyen Bibot exceedingly;

he laughed until his sides ached, and the tears streamed down his
cheeks.

"Nay, nay!" he said at last, "those aristos weren't in the
cart; the driver was not the Scarlet Pimpernel!"

"What?"
"No! The captain of the guard was that damned Englishman

in disguise, and everyone of his soldiers aristos!"
The crowd this time said nothing: the story certainly savoured

of the supernatural, and though the Republic had abolished God, it had
not quite succeeded in killing the fear of the supernatural in the

hearts of the people. Truly that Englishman must be the devil himself.
The sun was sinking low down in the west. Bibot prepared himself

to close the gates.
"EN AVANT The carts," he said.

Some dozen covered carts were drawn up in a row, ready to
leave town, in order to fetch the produce from the country close by,

for market the next morning. They were mostly well known to Bibot,
as they went through his gate twice every day on their way to and from

the town. He spoke to one or two of their drivers--mostly women--and
was at great pains to examine the inside of the carts.

"You never know," he would say, "and I'm not going to be
caught like that fool Grospierre."

The women who drove the carts usually spent their day on the
Place de la Greve, beneath the platform of the guillotine, knitting

and gossiping, whilst they watched the rows of tumbrils arriving with
the victims the Reign of Terror claimed every day. It was great fun

to see the aristos arriving for the reception of Madame la Guillotine,
and the places close by the platform were very much sought after.

Bibot, during the day, had been on duty on the Place. He recognized
most of the old hats, "tricotteuses," as they were called, who sat there

and knitted, whilst head after head fell beneath the knife, and they
themselves got quite bespattered with the blood of those cursed aristos.

"He! la mere!" said Bibot to one of these horrible hags,
"what have you got there?"

He had seen her earlier in the day, with her knitting and the
whip of her cart close beside her. Now she had fastened a row of

curly locks to the whip handle, all colours, from gold to silver, fair
to dark, and she stroked them with her huge, bony fingers as she

laughed at Bibot.
"I made friends with Madame Guillotine's lover," she said with

a coarse laugh, "he cut these off for me from the heads as they rolled
down. He has promised me some more to-morrow, but I don't know if I

shall be at my usual place."
"Ah! how is that, la mere?" asked Bibot, who, hardened soldier that

he was, could not help shuddering at the awful loathsomeness of this
semblance of a woman, with her ghastlytrophy on the handle of her whip.

"My grandson has got the small-pox," she said with a jerk of
her thumb towards the inside of her cart, "some say it's the plague!

If it is, I sha'n't be allowed to come into Paris to-morrow."
At the first mention of the word small-pox, Bibot had stepped

hastilybackwards, and when the old hag spoke of the plague,
he retreated from her as fast as he could.

"Curse you!" he muttered, whilst the whole crowd hastily
avoided the cart, leaving it standing all alone in the midst of the

place.
The old hag laughed.

"Curse you, citoyen, for being a coward," she said. "Bah!
what a man to be afraid of sickness."

"MORBLEU! the plague!"
Everyone was awe-struck and silent, filled with horror for the

loathsome malady, the one thing which still had the power to arouse
terror and disgust in these savage, brutalised creatures.

"Get out with you and with your plague-stricken brood!"
shouted Bibot, hoarsely.

And with another rough laugh and coarse jest, the old hag
whipped up her lean nag and drove her cart out of the gate.

This incident had spoilt the afternoon. The people were
terrified of these two horrible curses, the two maladies which nothing

could cure, and which were the precursors of an awful and lonely
death. They hung about the barricades, silent and sullen for a while,

eyeing one another suspiciously, avoiding each other as if by
instinct, lest the plague lurked already in their midst. Presently,

as in the case of Grospierre, a captain of the guard appeared
suddenly. But he was known to Bibot, and there was no fear of his

turning out to be a sly Englishman in disguise.
"A cart,. . ." he shouted breathlessly, even before he had

reached the gates.
"What cart?" asked Bibot, roughly.

"Driven by an old hag. . . . A covered cart. . ."
"There were a dozen. . ."

"An old hag who said her son had the plague?"
"Yes. . ."

"You have not let them go?"
"MORBLEU!" said Bibot, whose purple cheeks had suddenly

become white with fear.
"The cart contained the CI-DEVANT Comtesse de Tourney and

her two children, all of them traitors and condemned to death."
"And their driver?" muttered Bibot, as a superstitious shudder

ran down his spine.
"SACRE TONNERRE," said the captain, "but it is feared that

it was that accursed Englishman himself--the Scarlet Pimpernel."
CHAPTER II DOVER: "THE FISHERMAN'S REST"

In the kitchen Sally was extremely busy--saucepans and
frying-pans were standing in rows on the gigantichearth, the huge

stock-pot stood in a corner, and the jack turned with slow
deliberation, and presented alternately to the glow every side of a

noble sirloin of beef. The two little kitchen-maids bustled around,
eager to help, hot and panting, with cotton sleeves well tucked up

above the dimpled elbows, and giggling over some private jokes of
their own, whenever Miss Sally's back was turned for a moment. And

old Jemima, stolid in temper and solid in bulk, kept up a long and
subdued grumble, while she stirred the stock-pot methodically over the

fire.
"What ho! Sally!" came in cheerful if none too melodious

accents from the coffee-room close by.
"Lud bless my soul!" exclaimed Sally, with a good-humoured

laugh, "what be they all wanting now, I wonder!"
"Beer, of course," grumbled Jemima, "you don't `xpect Jimmy

Pitkin to `ave done with one tankard, do ye?"
"Mr. `Arry, `e looked uncommon thirsty too," simpered Martha,

one of the little kitchen-maids; and her beady black eyes twinkled as
they met those of her companion, whereupon both started on a round of

short and suppressed giggles.
Sally looked cross for a moment, and thoughtfully rubbed her

hands against her shapely hips; her palms were itching, evidently, to
come in contact with Martha's rosy cheeks--but inherent good-humour

prevailed, and with a pout and a shrug of the shoulders, she turned
her attention to the fried potatoes.