e looked keenly at the other, and laid his hand
upon his throat--"I am under the espionage of the Yankee ambassador.
There are spies who seek to join my crew for treasonable ends; if I find
you one of these, you shall hang to my yard-arm!"

The felon walked into the dim old city, and seated himself in a
wine-shop. Some market folks were chanting in _patois_, and their
light-heartedness enraged him. He turned up a crooked street, and
stopped before an ancient church, grotesque with broken buttresses,
pinnacles, and gargoyles. The portal was wide open, and, as he entered,
some scores of school-children burst suddenly into song. It seemed to
him an accusation, shouted by a choir of angels.

At the end of the city, facing the sea, rose a massive castle. He scaled
its stairs, and passed through the courtyard, and, crossing the farther
moat, stood upon a grassy hill--once an outwork--whence the blue channel
was visible half way to England.

A knot of soldiers came out to regard him, and his fears magnified their
curiosity; he ran down the parapet, to their surprise, and re-entered
the town by a roundabout way. "I will take a chamber," he said, "and
shun observation."

An old woman, in a starched cap, who talked incessantly, showed him a
number of rooms in a great stone building. He chose a garret among the
chimney-stacks, and lit a fire, and ordered a newspaper and a bottle of
brandy. He sat down to read in loneliness. As he surmised, the murder
was printed among the "_Faits Divers_;" it gave his name and the story
of the tragedy. His chair rattled upon the tiles as he read, and the
tongs, wherewith he touched the fire, clattered in his nervous fingers.

The place was not more composed than himself; the flame was the noisiest
in the world; it crackled and crashed and made horrible shadows on the
walls. There were rats under the floor whose gnawings were like human
speech, and the old house appeared to settle now and then with a groan
as if unwilling to shelter guilt. As he looked down upon the clustering
roofs of the town they seemed wonderfully like a crowd of people gazing
up at his retreat. All the dormer-windows were so many pitiless eyes,
and the chimney-pots were guns and cannon to batter down his eyrie.

When night fell upon the city and sea, his fancies were not less
alarming. He could not rid himself of the idea that the dead man was at
his side. In vain he called upon his victim to appear, and laughed till
the