The horses were tired, It was a bad time and place for my design, and only the coming night was in my favour.

But I was desperate.
Yet before I moved or gave a signal which nothing could recall, I scanned the landscape eagerly, scrutinizing in turn the small, rich plain below us, warmed by the last rays of the sun, the bare hills here glowing, there dark, the scattered wood-clumps and spinneys that filled the angles of the river, even the dusky line of helm-oaks that crowned the ridge beyond--Caylus way.

So near our own country there might be help! If the messenger whom we had despatched to the Vicomte before leaving home had reached him, our uncle might have returned, and even be in Cahors to meet us.
But no party appeared in sight: and I saw no place where an ambush could be lying.

I remembered that no tidings of our present plight or of what had happened could have reached the Vicomte.

The hope faded out of life as soon as despair had given it birth.