"Be ready to start in ten minutes.
You will guide us." But when the ten minutes had elapsed and the party were ready to start, to the astonishment of all the steward was not to be found.

To peremptory calls for him no answer came; and a hurried search through the hamlet proved equally fruitless.

The only person who had seen him since his interview with Tavannes turned out to be M.de Tignonville; and he had seen him mount his horse five minutes before, and move off--as he believed--by the Challans road.
"Ahead of us ?" "Yes, M.le Comte," Tignonville answered, shading his eyes and gazing in the direction of the fringe of trees.

"I did not see him take the road, but he was beside the north end of the wood when I saw him last.
Thereabouts!" and he pointed to a place where the Challans road wound round the flank of the wood.

"When we are beyond that point, I think we shall see him." Count Hannibal growled a word in his beard, and, turning in his saddle, looked back the way he had come.