The man had been round the walls and reported that nothing stirred beneath them; that there was more than one fire in the town, and that the streets appeared to be given over to disorder and riot.
"It is assuredly a change in the Government," he explained, simply.

"And there will be many for Monsieur l'Abbe to bury on Sunday." Jean was to accompany them to the cottage of an old man who had once lived by ferrying the rare passenger across the Gironde.

Having left them here, he could reach Blaye before daylight, from whence a passage up the river to Bordeaux would be easily procurable.
The boatman's cottage stood on the bank of a creek running into the Gironde.

It was a lone building hidden among the low dunes that lie between the river and the marsh.

Any one approaching it by daylight would be discernible half an hour in advance, and the man's boat, though old, was seaworthy.