a troop of cavalry news might be sent to Turin. In that case we
might be arrested as soon as we entered the city. I should be
obliged if you would give orders to the officer in command that
one of the troopers should bring the horses, cloaks, and hats back
here with him."

The governor rang a bell, and on an orderly entering said: "Tell
Captain Sion to have his troop in readiness to start in an hour's
time, in order to form an escort for one of Viscount Turenne's
officers, and tell him that when he has the troop ready to start
he is to come to me for detailed orders. I have said an hour,
Monsieur Campbell," he went on, after the orderly had left the
room, "because, in the first place, it is not yet dark, and in
the second, it will take some twenty minutes to prepare a meal.
You will have a long night's work before you, and I dare say you
have had nothing since you halted for breakfast."

"Thank you, colonel, I had not thought of it; but I should certainly
have remembered it before tomorrow morning. We halted for breakfast
at eleven, and if it had not been for your kind offer we should
have had no chance of getting anything till we entered Turin, and
even there the less we go into any cabarets the better."

"That is true. I have sent a message to the cook that twenty minutes
is the utmost we can give for the preparation of a meal."



CHAPTER IV: SUCCESS