The Abbess Of Vlaye Page 3

  CHAPTER I.

  VILLENEUVE-L'ABBESSE.

  The horse looked piteously at the man. Blood oozed from its brokenknees and its legs quivered under it. The man holding his scratchedand abraded hand to his mouth returned the beast's look, at first withpromise of punishment, but by and by less unkindly. He was a just man,and he saw that the fault was his; since it was he who, after crossingthe ridge, had urged the horse out of the path that he might be sparedsome part of the weary descent. Out of the path, and cunningly hiddenby a tuft of rough grass, a rabbit-hole had lain in wait.

  He contented himself with a word of disgust, therefore, chucked therein impatiently--since justice has its limits--and began to lead thehorse down the descent, which a short sward rendered slippery. But hehad not gone many paces before he halted. The horse's painful limp andthe sweat that broke out on its shoulders indicated that two brokenknees were not the worst of the damage. The man let the rein go,resigned himself to the position, and, shrugging his shoulders,scanned the scene before him.

  The accident had happened on the south side of the long swell of chalkhills which the traveller had been mounting for an hour past; andscarcely a stone's-throw below the ruined wind-mill that had been hislandmark for leagues. To right and left of him, under a pale-blue sky,the breezy, open down, carpeted with wild thyme and vetches, and alivewith the hum of bees, stretched in long soft undulations, marred by nosign of man save a second and a third wind-mill ranged in line on thehighest breasts. Below him the slope of sward and fern, broken here bya solitary blackthorn, there by a clump of whin and briars, sweptgently down to a shallow wide valley--almost a plain--green andthickly wooded, beyond which the landscape rose again slowly andimperceptibly into uplands. Through this wide valley flowed from leftto right a silvery river, its meandering course marked by the lighterfoliage of willows and poplars; and immediately below the traveller acluster of roofless hovels on the bank seemed to mark a ford.

  On all the hill about him, on the slopes of thyme, and heather, andyellow gorse, the low sun was shining--from his right, and from alittle behind him, so that his shadow stretched far across the sward.But in the valley about the river and the ford evening was beginningto fall, grey, peaceful, silent. For a time his eyes roved hither andthither, seeking a halting-place of more promise than the ruined cots;and at length they found what they sought. He marked, rising from amass of trees a little beyond the ford, a thin curl of smoke, solight, so grey, as to be undiscoverable by any but the sharpesteyes--but his were of the sharpest. The outline of the woods at thesame point indicated a clearing within a wide loop of the river; andputting the one with the other, des Ageaux--for it was he--came to afair certainty that a house of some magnitude lay hidden there.

  At any rate he saw no better chance of shelter. It was that of theruined hovels and the roadside, and taking the rein once more, he ledthe horse down the hill, and in the first dusk of the evening crossedthe pale clear water on stepping-stones. He suffered the horse tostand awhile in the stream and drink and cool its legs amid the dark,waving masses of weed. Then he urged it up the bank, and led it alongthe track, that was fast growing dim, and grey, and lonesome.

  The horse moved painfully, knuckling over at every step. Yet night hadnot quite fallen when the traveller, plodding along beside it, saw twostone pillars standing gaunt and phantom-like on the left of the path.Each bore aloft a carved escutcheon, and in that weird half-light andwith a backing of dark forest trees the two might have been taken forghosts. Their purpose, however, was plain, for they flanked theopening, at right angles to his path, of a rough road, at the end ofwhich, at a distance of some ten score paces from the pillars,appeared an open gateway framed in a dim wall. No more than that, forabove was the pale sky, and on either hand the black line of treeshedged the narrow picture.

  The traveller peered awhile at the escutcheons. But gathering darknessand the lichens which covered the stone foiled him, and he was littlethe wiser when he turned down the avenue. When he had traversed a halfof its length the trees fell back on either hand, and revealed thesullen length of a courtyard wall, and rising within it, a little onhis right, a dark mass of building, compact in the main of two roundtowers, of the date of Philip Augustus, with some additions of moremodern times. The effect of the pile, viewed in that half-light, wasgloomy if not forbidding; but the open gateway, the sled-marks thatled to it, and the wisps of hay which strewed the road, no less thanthe broken yoke that hung in the old elm beside the entrance--allthese, which the Lieutenant's eyes were quick to discern, seemed tooffer a more homely and more simple welcome.

  A silent welcome, nevertheless, borne on the scent of new-mown,half-gathered hay; a scent which des Ageaux was destined to associateever after with this beginning of an episode, and with his entrance inthe gloaming, amid quiet things. Slowly he passed under the gateway,leading the halting horse. Fallen hay, swept from the cart by the browof the arch, deadened his footfalls, and before he was discovered hewas able to appreciate the enclosure, half courtyard, half fold-yard,sloping downward from the house and shut in on the other sides by atile-roofed wall. At the lower end on his left were stalls, and sheds,and stables, and a vague, mysterious huddle of ploughs and gear, andfeeding beasts, and farm refuse. Between this mass--to which the nightbegan to lend strange forms--and the great, towered house which loomedblack against the sky, lay the slope of the court, broken midway bythe walled marge of a swell something Italian in fashion, and speakingof more prosperous days. On this there sat, as the traveller saw, twofigures.

  And then one only. For as he looked, uncertain whether to betakehimself first to the stables of the house, one of the two figuressprang from the wall-edge, and came bounding to him with handsupraised, flying skirts, a sharp cry of warning.

  "Oh, take care, Charles!" it cried. "Go back before M. le Vicomtecomes!"

  Then, at six paces from him, she knew him for a stranger, and the lastword fell scarcely breathed from her lips; while he, knowing her for agirl, and young by her voice, uncovered. "I seek only a night'sshelter," he said stiffly. "Pardon me, mademoiselle, the alarm I fearI have caused you. My horse slipped on the hill, and is unable totravel farther."

  She stood staring at him in astonishment, and until her companion atthe well came forward made no reply. Something in the movements ofthis second figure as it crossed the court struck the eye as abnormal,but it was only when it came quite close that the stranger discoveredthat the lad before him was slightly hump-backed.

  "You have met with a mischance," the youth said with awkwarddiffidence.

  "Yes."

  "Whatever the cause, you are welcome. Go, Bonne," the young mancontinued, addressing the girl, "it is better you went--and tell myfather that a gentleman is here craving shelter. When I have stabledhis horse I will bring him in. This way, if you please!" the ladcontinued, turning to lead the way to the stables, but casting frommoment to moment timid looks at his guest. "The place is rough, butsuch as it is, it is at your service. Have you ridden far to-day, ifit please you?"

  "From Rochechouart."

  "It is well we had not closed the gates," the youth answered shyly;"we close them an hour after sunset by rule. But to-day the men havebeen making hay, and we sup late."

  The stranger expressed his obligation, and, following his guide, ledhis horse through one of the doors of a long range of stabling builtagainst the western wall of the courtyard. Within all was dark, and hewaited while his companion fetched a lanthorn. The light, when itcame, disclosed a sad show of empty mangers, broken racks, and roofbeams hung with cobwebs. Rain and sunshine, it was evident, enteredthrough more holes than one, and round the men's heads a couple ofbats, startled by the lanthorn-light, flitted noiselessly to and fro.

  At the farther end of the place, the roof above three or four stallsshowed signs of recent repair; and here the young man invited hisguest to place his beast.

  "But I shall be turning out your horses," the stranger objected.<
br />
  The youth laughed a little awry. "There's but my father's gelding," hesaid, "and old Panza the pony. And they are in the ox-stable wherethey have company. This," he added, pointing to the roof, "was madegood for my sister the Abbess's horses."

  The guest nodded, and, after examining his beast's injuries, bathedits knees with fresh water; then producing a bandage from hissaddle-bag he soaked it in the water and skilfully wound it round thestrained fetlock. The lad held the lanthorn, envy, mingled withadmiration, growing in his eyes as he watched the other's skilledhands and method.

  "You are well used to horses?" he said.

  "Tolerably," des Ageaux answered, looking up. "Are not you?" For inthose days it was an essential part of a gentleman's education.

  The lad sighed. "Not to horses of this sort," he said, shrugging hisshoulders. And des Ageaux took note of the sigh and the words, butsaid nothing. Instead he removed his sword and pistols from hissaddle, and would have taken up his bags also, but the young maninterposed and took possession of them. A moment and the two werecrossing the darkened courtyard. The light of the lanthorn made itdifficult to see aught beyond the circle of its rays, but the strangernoticed that the chateau consisted half of a steep-roofed house, andhalf of the two round towers he had seen; house and towers standing inone long line. Two rickety wooden bridges led across a moat to twodoors, the one set in the inner of the two towers--probably this wasthe ancient entrance--the other in the more modern part.

  On the bridge leading to the latter two serving-men with lights wereawaiting them. The nearer domestic advanced, bowing. "M. le Vicomtewill descend if"--and then, after a pause, speaking more stiffly, "M.le Vicomte has not yet heard whom he has the honour of entertaining."

  "I have no pretensions to put him to the trouble of descending," thetraveller answered politely. "Say if you please that a gentleman ofBrittany seeks shelter for the night, and would fain pay his respectsto M. le Vicomte at his convenience."

  The servant bowed, and turning with ceremony, led the way into a bare,dimly-lit hall open to its steep oaken roof, and not measurably morecomfortable or less draughty than the stable. Here and there dustyblazonings looked down out of the darkness, or rusty weapons leftsolitary in racks too large for them gave back gleams of light. In themiddle of the stone floor a trestle table such as might have borne theweight of huge sirloins and great bustards, and feasted two scoremen-at-arms in the days of the great Francis, supported a litter ofshabby odds and ends; old black-jacks jostling riding-spurs, and aleaping-pole lying hard by a drenching-horn. An open door on the towerside of the hall presented the one point of warmth in the apartment,for through it entered a stream of ruddy light and an odour thatannounced where the kitchen lay.

  But if this were the dining-hall? If the guest felt alarm on thispoint he was soon reassured. The servant conducted him up a shortflight of six steps which rose in one corner. The hall, in truth, hugeas it seemed in its dreary emptiness, was but one half of the originalhall. The leftward half had been partitioned off and converted intotwo storeys--the lower story raised a little from the ground for thesake of dryness--of more modern chambers. More modern; but if thatinto which the guest was ushered, a square room not unhandsome in itsproportions, stood for sample, scarcely more cheerful. The hangings onthe walls were of old Sarazinois, but worn and faded to the colour ofdust. Carpets of leather covered the floor, but they were in holes andof a like hue; while the square stools clad in velvet and gilt-nailed,which stood against the walls, were threadbare of stuff and tarnishedof nails. In winter, warmed by the ruddy blaze of a generous fire,and well sconced, and filled with pleasant company seated about awell-spread board, the room might have passed muster and even conducedto ease. But as the dusky frame of a table, lighted by four poorcandles--that strove in vain with the vast obscurity--and set with nogreat, store of provision, it wore an air of meagreness not a whitremoved from poverty.

  The man who stood beside the table in the light of the candles, andformed the life of the picture, blended well with the furnishings. Hewas tall and thin, with stooping shoulders and a high-nosed face, thatin youth had been masterful and now was peevish and weary. He wore asword and much faded lace, and on the appearance of his guest movedforward a pace and halted, with the precision and stiffness ofclockwork. "I have the honour," he began, "to welcome, I believe----"

  "A gentleman of Brittany," des Ageaux answered, bowing low. It by nomeans suited his plans to be recognised. "And one, M. le Vicomte, whorespectfully craves a night's hospitality."

  "Which the chateau of Villeneuve-l'Abbesse," the Vicomte replied withgrandeur, "has often granted to the greatest, nor"--he waved his handwith formal grace--"ever refused to the meanest. They have attended, Itrust," he continued with the air of one who, at the head of a greathousehold, knows, none the less, how to think for his guests, "to yourpeople, sir?"

  "Alas, M. le Vicomte," des Ageaux answered, a faint twinkle in hiseyes belying the humility of his tone, "I have none; I am travellingalone."

  "Alone?" The Vicomte repeated the word in a tone of wonder. "You haveno servants with you--at all?"

  "Alas--no."

  "Is it possible?"

  Des Ageaux shrugged his shoulders, and spread out his hands. "In thesedays, M. le Vicomte, yes."

  The Vicomte seemed by the droop of his shoulders to admit the plea;perhaps because the other's eyes strayed involuntarily to the shabbyfurniture. He shook his head gloomily. "Since Coutras----" he began,and then, considering that he was unbending too soon, he broke off."You met with some accident, I believe, sir?" he said. "But first, Idid not catch your name?"

  "Des Voeux," the Lieutenant answered, adopting on the spur of themoment one somewhat like his own. "My horse fell and cut its knees onthe hill about a mile beyond the ford. I much fear it has alsostrained a fetlock."

  "It will not be fit to travel to-morrow, I doubt?"

  The guest spread out his hands, intimating that time and the morrowmust take care of themselves; or that it was no use to fight againstfate.

  "I must lend you something from the stables, then," the Vicomteanswered; as if at least a score of horses stood at rack and manger inhis stalls. "But I am forgetting your own needs, sir. Circumstanceshave thrown my household out of gear, and we sup late tonight. But weshall not need to wait long."

  He had barely spoken when the two serving-men who had met theLieutenant on the bridge entered, one behind the other, bearing withsome pomp of circumstance a couple of dishes. They set these on theboard, and withdrawing--not without leaving behind them a pleasantscent of new-mown hay--returned quickly bearing two more. Then fallingback they announced by the mouth of the least meagre that my lord wasserved.

  The meal which they announced, though home-grown and of the plainest,was sufficient, and des Ageaux, on the Vicomte's invitation, took hisseat upon a stool at a nicely regulated distance below his host. As hedid so the girl he had seen in the courtyard glided in by a side doorand silently took her seat on the farther side of the table.Apparently the Vicomte thought his guest below the honour of anintroduction, for he said nothing. And the girl only acknowledged theLieutenant's respectful salutation by a bow.

  The four candles shed a feeble light on the table, and left thegreater part of the room in darkness. Des Ageaux could not see thegirl well, and he got little more than an impression of a figuremoderately tall and somewhat plump, and of a gentle, downcast face.Form and face owned, certainly, the charm of youth and freshness. Butto eyes versed in the brilliance of a Court and the magnificence of_grandes dames_ they lacked the more striking characteristics ofbeauty.

  He gave her a thought, however, pondering while he gave ear to theVicomte's querulous condescensions how so gentle a creature--for hergentleness and placidity struck him--came of so stiff and peevish afather. But that was all. Or it might have been all if as the thoughtpassed through his mind his host had not abruptly changed theconversation and disclosed another side of his character.

  "Where is Roger?" he asked, address
ing the girl with sharpness.

  "I do not know, sir," she murmured.

  A retort seemed hovering on the Vicomte's lips, when the youth who hadtaken the guest to the stable, and had stayed without, perhaps to makesome change in his rustic clothes, entered and slid timidly into hisplace beside his sister. He hoped, probably, to pass unseen, but theVicomte, his great high nose twitching, fixed him with his eyes andpointed inexorably at him, with a spoon held delicately between thumband finger. "You would not think," he said with grim abruptness, "thatthat--that, M. des Voeux, was son of mine?"

  Des Ageaux started. "I fear," he said hastily, "that it was I, sir,who made him late. He was good enough to receive me."

  "I can only assure you," the Vicomte replied with cruel wit, "thatwhoever made him late, it was not I who made him--as he is! TheVilleneuves, till his day, I'd have you know, sir, have been straightand tall, and men of their hands, as ready with a blow as a word! Mento make their way in the world. But you see him! You see him! Canyou," he continued, his eyes half-closed, dwelling on the lad, whosesuffering was evident, "at Court? Or courting? Or stepping a_pavanne?_ Or----"

  "Father!"

  The word burst from the girl's lips, drawn from her by sheer pain. TheVicomte turned to her with icy courtesy. "You spoke, I think?" he saidin a tone which rebuked her for the freedom on which she had ventured."Just so. I was forgetting. We live so quietly here, we use so littleceremony with one another, that even I forget at times that familymatters are not interesting to a stranger. Were my elder daughterhere, M. des--ah, des Voeux, yes--my daughter the Abbess, who knowsthe world, and has some tincture of manners, and is not taken commonlyfor a waiting-woman, she would be able to entertain you better. Butyou see what we are. For," with a smirk, "it were rude not to includemyself with my family."

  No wonder, the guest thought, as he listened, full of pity--no wonderthe lad had spoken timidly and shyly, if this were the daily treatmenthe received! If poverty, working on pride, had brought the last of agreat family to this--to repaying on the innocents who shared hisdecay the slings and arrows of unkind fortune! The girl's exclamation,wrung from her by her brother's suffering, had gone to theLieutenant's heart, though that heart was not of the softest. He wouldhave given something to silence the bitter old tyrant. But experiencetold him that he might make matters worse. He was no knight-errant, norescuer of dames; and, after all, the Vicomte was their father. Sowhile he hesitated, seeking in vain a safe subject, the sharp tonguewas at work again.

  "I would like you to see my elder daughter," the Vicomte resumed withtreacherous blandness. "She has neither a ploughboy's figure, nor,"slowly, "a dairymaid's speech. Her manners are quite like those of theworld. She might go anywhere, even to Court, where she has been,without rendering herself the subject of ridicule and contempt. It istruly unfortunate for us"--with a bow--"that you cannot see her."

  "She is not at home?" the Lieutenant said for the sake of sayingsomething. He was full of pity for the girl whose face, now red, nowpale, betrayed how she suffered under the discipline.

  "She does not live at home," the Vicomte answered. And then--withcurious inconsistency he now hid and now declared his poverty--"Wehave not much left of which we can be proud," he continued, "since thebattle of Coutras seven years back took from the late King's friendsall they had. But the Abbey of Vlaye is still our appanage. My elderdaughter is the Abbess."

  "It lies, I think, near Vlaye?"

  "Yes, some half-league from Vlaye and three leagues from here. Youhave heard of Vlaye, then, Monsieur--Monsieur des Voeux?"

  "Without doubt, M. le Vicomte."

  "Indeed! In what way, may I ask?" There was a faint tinge of suspicionin his tone.

  "At Rochechouart I was told that the roads in that direction were notover safe."

  The Vicomte laughed in his sardonic fashion. "They begin to cry out,do they?" he said. "The fat burgesses who fleece us? Not very safe,ha, ha! The roads! Not so safe as their back-shops where they lend tous at cent per cent!"--with bitterness. "It is well that there is someone to fleece them in their turn!"

  "They told me as much as that," des Ageaux replied with gravity. "Somuch, indeed, that I was surprised to find your gates still open! Theygave me to understand that no man slept without a guard within fourleagues of Vlaye."

  "They told you that, did they?" the Vicomte answered. And he chuckled,well satisfied. It pleased him to think that if he and his could nolonger keep Jacques Bonhomme in order, there were others who could."They told you not far from the truth. A little later, and you hadbeen barred out even here. Not that I fear the Captain of Vlaye. Hawkspike not out hawks' eyes," with a lifting of the head, and an odd showof arrogance. "We are good friends, M. de Vlaye and I."

  "Still you bar your gates, soon or late?" the Lieutenant replied witha smile.

  A shadow fell across the Vicomte's face. "Not against him," he saidshortly.

  "No, of course not," des Voeux replied. "I had forgotten. You have theCrocans also at no great distance. I was forgetting them."

  The sudden rigidity of his younger listeners, and the silence whichfell on all, warned him, as soon as he had spoken, that he hadsaid something amiss. Nor was the silence all. When his host nextspoke--after an interval--it was with a passion as far removed fromthe cynical rudeness to which he had treated his children as are thepoles apart. "That name is not named in this house!" he cried, hisvoice thin and tremulous. "By no one!" he struck the table with ashaking hand. "Understand me, sir, by no one! God's curse on them! Ay,and on all who----"

  "No, sir, no!" The cry came from the girl. "Do not curse him!"

  She was on her feet. For an instant the Lieutenant, seeing herfather's distorted face, feared that he would strike her. But theresult was different. The opposition that might have maddened theangry man, had the effect of sobering him. "Sit down!" he muttered,passing his napkin over his face. "Sit down, fool! Sit down! Andyou"--he paused a moment, striving to regain the gibing tone that washabitual to him--"you, sir, may now see how it is. I told you we hadno manners. You have now the proof of it. I doubt I must keep you,until the Abbess, my daughter, pays her next visit, that you may seeat least one Villeneuve who is neither clown nor dotard!"

  Man of the world as he was, the King's Lieutenant knew not what to sayto this outburst. He murmured a vague apology, and thought howdifferent all was from the anticipations which the scent of hay andthe farmyard peace had raised in him on his arrival. This old man,rotting in the husk of his former greatness, girding at his helplesschildren, gnawing, in the decay of his family's grandeur, on his heartand theirs, returning scorn for scorn, and spite for spite, but onthose who were innocent of either, ignorant of either--this was apicture to the painting of which the most fanciful must have broughtsome imagination. Under the surface lay something more; something thathad to do with the Crocans. He fancied that he could make a guess atthe secret; and that it had to do with the girl's lover. But the mealwas closing, the Vicomte's rising interrupted his thoughts, andwhatever interest the question had for him, he was forced to put itaway for the time.

  The Vicomte bowed a stiff good-night. "Boor as he is, I fear that youmust now put up with my son," he said, smiling awry. "He has the TowerRoom, where, in my time, I have known the best company in the provincelie, when good company was; it has been scarce," he continuedbitterly, "since Coutras. He will find you a lodging there, and if theaccommodation be rough, and your room-fellow what you see him,"shrugging his shoulders, "at least you will have space enough andfollow good gentry. I have known the Governor of Poitou and theLieutenant of Perigord, with two of the Vicomtes of the Limousin, liethere--and fourteen truckle-beds about them. In those days was littleneed to bar our gates at night. Solomon! The lanthorn, fool! I bidyou good-night, sir!"

  Des Ageaux bowed his acknowledgements, and following in the train ofan older serving-man than he had yet seen; who, bearing a lanthorn,led him up a small staircase. Roger the hapless followed. On the firstfloor the guest noted the doors of four rooms
, two on either side of amiddle passage, that got its light from a window at the end of thehouse. Such rooms--or rooms opening one through the other--were atthat date reserved for the master and mistress of the chateau, andtheir daughters, maiden or married. For something of the old systemwhich secluded women, and a century before had forbidden theirappearance at Court, still prevailed; nor was the Lieutenant at allsurprised when his guide, turning from these privileged apartments,led him up a flight of four or five steps at the hither end of thepassage. And so through a low doorway.

  He passed the door, and was surprised to find himself in the open airon the roof of the hall, the stars above him, and the night breezecooling his brow. The steeply-pitched lead ended in a broad, flatgutter, fenced by a rail fixed in the parapet. The servant led himalong the path which this gutter provided to a door in the wall of thegreat round tower that rose twenty feet above the house. This gaveentrance to a small chamber--one of those commonly found between thetwo skins of such old buildings--which served both for landing andante-room. From it the dark opening of a winding staircase led upwardson one hand; on the other a low-browed door masked the course of thedownward flight.

  Across this closet--bare as bare walls could make it--the grey-beardedservant led him in two strides, and opening a farther door introducedhim into the chamber which had seen so much good company. It was agloomy, octagonal room of great size, lighted in the daytime by fourdeep-sunk windows, and occupying--save for such narrow closets as thatthrough which they entered--a whole storey of the tower. The lanthorndid but make darkness visible, but Solomon proceeded to light tworushlights that stood in iron sconces on the wall, and by their lightthe Lieutenant discerned three truckle-beds laid between two of thewindows. He could well believe, so vast was the apartment, thatfourteen had not cumbered its bareness. At this date a couple ofchests, as many stools, a bundle of old spears and a heavythree-legged table made up, with some dingy, tattered hangings, thewhole furniture of the chamber.

  The old serving-man set down the lanthorn and looked about himsorrowfully.

  "Thirty-four I've seen sleep here," he said. "The Governor of Poitou,and the Governor of Perigord, and the four Vicomtes of the Limousin,and twenty-eight gentles in truckles."

  "Twenty-eight?" the Lieutenant questioned, measuring in someastonishment the space with his eye. "But your master said----"

  "Twenty-eight, by your leave," the man answered obstinately. "Andevery man his dog! A gentleman was a gentleman then, and a Vicomte aVicomte. But since that cursed battle at Coutras set us down and putthese Huguenots up, there is an end of gentry almost. Ay, thirty--wasit thirty, I said?"

  "Four, you said. Thirty-four," des Ageaux answered, smiling."Good-night."

  The man shook his head sombrely, bade them goodnight, and closed thedoor on them.

  An instant later he could be heard groping his way back through thecloset and over the roof. The Lieutenant, as soon as the sound ceased,looked round and thought that he had seldom lain in a gloomier place.The windows were but wooden lattices innocent of glass, and throughthe slats of the nearest a strong shoot of ivy grew into the room. Thenight air entered with it and stirred the ragged hangings that covereda part of the walls; hangings that to add to the general melancholyhad once been black, a remnant, it is possible, of the funeraltrappings of some dead Vicomte. Frogs croaked in a puddle without; oneof the lattices creaked open at intervals, only to close again with ahollow report; the rushlights flared sideways in the draught. DesAgeaux had read of such a room in the old romances, in _Bevis ofHampton_, or the _History of Armida_; a room of shadows and gloom,owl-flittings and dead furnishings. But he smiled at the thoughts itcalled up. He had often lain in his cloak under the sky amid dead men.Nevertheless, "Do you sleep here alone?" he asked, turning to hiscompanion, who had seated himself despondently on one of the beds.

  The lad, oppressed by what had gone forward downstairs, barely lookedup. "Yes," he began, "since"--and then, breaking off, he addedsullenly, "Yes, I do."

  "Then you don't lack courage!" des Ageaux replied.

  "People sleep well when they are tired," the youth returned, "as I amto-night."

  The Lieutenant accepted the hint, and postponed until the morrow thequestions he had it in his mind to ask. Nodding a good-humoured assenthe proceeded to his simple arrangements for the night, placed hissword and pistols beside the truckle-bed, and in a few minutes wassleeping as soundly on his thin palliasse as if he had been in truththe poverty-stricken gentleman of Brittany he once had been and stillmight be again.