Come, knave, move yourself!" At the end of a few minutes we set out at a sharp trot, leaving the curious ones whom my loud-voiced commands had assembled, to speculate upon the meaning of so much bustle.

Once clear of the township we gave the reins to our horses, and our trot became a gallop as we travelled along the road to Meung, with the Loire on our right.

And as we went I briefly told Michelot what was afoot, interlarding my explanations with prayers that we might come upon the kidnappers before they crossed the river, and curses at the flying pace of our mounts, which to my anxious mind seemed slow.
At about a mile from Blois the road runs over an undulation of the ground that is almost a hill.

From the moment that I had left Canaples as the Angelus was ringing, until the moment when our panting horses gained the brow of that little eminence, only half an hour had sped.
Still in that half-hour the tints had all but faded from the sky, and the twilight shadows grew thicker around us with every moment.

Yet not so thick had they become but that I could see a coach at a standstill in the hollow, some three hundred yards beneath us, and, by it, half a dozen horses, of which four were riderless and held by the two men who were still mounted.