The word "Spy" seemed to have run before him even here. That grim gateway had not kept it out. Men paused a moment to look at him: some were silent, some uttered a sound of hatred and contempt, but all seemed convinced that the accusation was a just one.
The soldiers halted by the wall some twenty feet in height. Herrick concluded that there was a terrace or garden above, because several persons, women and pages among them, were leaning over the wall looking into the court-yard below. A flight of stone steps, placed sideways to the wall, led down from this terrace, and at the foot of these steps was a woman mounted upon a beautiful bay mare, which pawed the ground, impatient to be gone. At a little distance a group of horsemen waited for her signal, which she was in the act of giving when the soldiers, with their prisoner in their midst, came to a halt not a dozen yards from her. The light from two or three torches held by servants who stood on the lower steps lit up her face, and Herrick saw again the woman who had ridden past the diligence a few hours ago, the woman who was destined to play so great a part in his life.
Captain Lemasle stepped to her side and saluted.
"Are you not to ride with us?" she asked. "We are waiting."
"Pardon, mademoiselle. I have just been rescuing a spy. The crowd had caught him, and it would have gone hard with him had we not taken him."
"If he is a spy, would that have mattered?" she said, loud enough for Herrick to hear.
"There is justice in proving a man guilty before he is hanged," Lemasle answered.
"Since when have you been so fastidious? I have heard other things of Gaspard Lemasle. Let me look at this spy."
"I seem better known than I imagined," the soldier muttered as he stood aside.