For at the end of the causeway, black against the western sky, rose the gateway and towers of Vrillac; and he saw that, as the Countess had said, it was a place ten men could hold against ten hundred! They stumbled down the beach, reached the causeway and trotted along it; more slowly now, and looking back.

The other women had followed by hook or by crook, some crying hysterically, yet clinging to their horses and even urging them; and in a medley, the causeway clear behind them and no one following, they reached the drawbridge, and passed under the arch of the gate beyond.
There friendly hands, Carlat's foremost, welcomed them and aided them to alight, and the Countess saw, as in a dream, the familiar scene, all unfamiliar: the gate, where she had played, a child, aglow with lantern- light and arms.

Men, whose rugged faces she had known in infancy, stood at the drawbridge chains and at the winches.

Others blew matches and handled primers, while old servants crowded round her, and women looked at her, scared and weeping.

She saw it all at a glance--the lights, the black shadows, the sudden glow of a match on the groining of the arch above.