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 ghastly trophy 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
hastily backwards, 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 gigantic hearth, 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.