"If they have resolved to continue their journey, a half-dozen men should suffice to recapture them.

I will despatch these at once..." La Boulaye looked up at that.
"If they have resolved to continue their journey ?" he echoed.

"What else should they have resolved ?" Tardivet stroked his reddish hair and smiled astutely.
"In organising a pursuit," said he, "the wise pursuer will always put himself in the place of the fugitives, and seek to reason as they would probably reason.

Now, what more likely than that these ladies, or their coachman, or that rascally ostler, should have thought of doubling back into France?
They might naturally argue that we; should never think of pursuing them in that direction.

Similarly placed, that is how I should reason, and that is the course I should adopt, making for Prussia through Lorraine.