But he who drove them had no pity
for weakness in an emergency. He looked back and saw, a half-mile behind
them, the glitter of steel following hard on their heels: and "Faster!
faster!" he cried, regardless of their prayers: and he beat the rearmost
of the horses with his scabbard. A waiting-woman shrieked that she
should fall, but he answered ruthlessly, "Fall then, fool!" and the
instinct of self-preservation coming to her aid, she clung and bumped and
toiled on with the rest until they reached the first houses of the town
about the bridges, and Badelon raised his hand as a signal that they
might slacken speed.
The bewilderment of the start had been so great that it was then only,
when they found their feet on the first link of the bridge, that two of
the party, the Countess and Tignonville, awoke to the fact that their
faces were set southwards. To cross the Loire in those days meant much
to all: to a Huguenot, very much. It chanced that these two rode on to
the bridge side by side, and the memory of their last crossing--the
remembrance that, on their journey north a month before, they had crossed
it hand-in-hand with the prospect of passing their lives together, and
with no faintest thought of the events which were to ensue, flashed into
the mind of each of them.
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