THE COUNTRY OF THE DREAD The three remaining Scottish palmers were riding due west into a sunset which hung like a broad red girdle over the Atlantic.

All the sky above their heads was blue grey and lucent.

But along the horizon, as it seemed for the space of two handbreadths, there was suspended this bandolier of flaming scarlet.
The adventurers were not weary of their quest.

They were only sick at heart with the fruitlessness of it.
First upon leaving Paris they had gone on to the Castle of Champtoce, and from beneath had surveyed the noble range of battlements crowning the heights above the broad, poplar-guarded levels of the Loire.

The Chateau de Thouars also they had seen, a small white-gabled house, most like a Scottish baron's tower, which the Marshal de Retz possessed in virtue of his neglected wife Katherine.