With each hour Monsieur's spirits flagged and his speech became less frequent; until presently when the light was nearly gone and the dusk was round us the brother and sister rode hand in hand, silent, gloomy, one at least of them weeping.

The cold shadow of the Cardinal, of Paris, of the scaffold fell on them, and chilled them.

As the mountains which they had known all their lives sank and faded behind us, and we entered on the wide, low valley of the Garonne, their hopes sank and faded also--sank to the dead level of despair.

Surrounded by guards, a mark for curious glances, with pride for a companion, M.de Cocheforet could have borne himself bravely; doubtless would bear himself bravely still when the end came.

But almost alone, moving forward through the grey evening to a prison, with so many measured days before him, and nothing to exhilarate or anger--in this condition it was little wonder if he felt, and betrayed that he felt, the blood run slow in his veins; if he thought more of the weeping wife and ruined home which he had left behind him than of the cause in which he had spent himself.
But God knows, they had no monopoly of gloom.