"You will be clever if you do, since they have gone by a different and a shorter road, one which might not be safe for you to travel. They will be in Passey by dawn."
"And how shall I let you know how I fare and where fortune may take me?"
"Success or failure, I shall hear soon enough," the dwarf answered. "Remember only that you serve Mademoiselle de Liancourt, and that all prison windows have not bars which may be lifted out. Farewell!" And without another word, he turned, and hurried back to the river-bank, where his boat lay.
So it happened that as Father Bertrand went back to the Rue St. Romain, and the alarm given by the jailer presently resulted in the finding of the wounded sentry, Roger Herrick was galloping through the night toward Passey and the woman he was destined to serve.
[CHAPTER V]
THE SCHOLAR
The village of Passey, nestling in the shadow of its château, looked secure, had indeed been well protected in past times, but to-day little real resistance could have been offered to a determined enemy. The outer wall of the château had crumbled and fallen in pieces, no vigilant eyes kept ward and watch from its battlements, and the serving-men in its old guard-rooms and courts were not of the kind out of which stout soldiers are made. It had been in the hands of the Duprés for three centuries or more, given originally to an ancestor in return for good service, for the family had bred many a gallant warrior in the past; but in recent years misfortune and poverty had come, and the Duprés were too proud to make petitions in the Castle of Vayenne. Nothing is easier to forget than past service if there is no present need of favors, and the Dukes of Montvilliers had practically forgotten their once powerful subject of Passey. More and more the family had lived a retired life, and the last two heads of it had been confirmed invalids. The present owner was a man of weak physique also, barred from a life in the open and all manly sports. Thrown in upon himself he had found consolation in books and in study, and had little care how the world went so it left him in peace. The late Duke, a man of warlike character and iron will, had thoroughly despised the old man at Passey, and when his son evinced a love for dreaming over books, his father sent him to Viscount Dupré. The château would serve as a convenient place of isolation, the Duke argued, and the old fool might well be made useful as a jailer to the young one.
"I hold you responsible for him," the Duke had said to Dupré. "Teach him to hate the books you love and I will find means to thank you; let him become such a one as yourself, and rest assured the reins of government will never fall into his hands when they drop from mine. The good of Montvilliers is far more to me than any son."