ed concealed beneath a flowing mantle. "Can
you use it?"

"I can but try, Jacqueline," he replied, fastening the girdle about his
waist and half-drawing and then thrusting the blade back into the
scabbard. "It seems a priceless weapon," he added, his eye lingering
on the richly inlaid hilt, "and has doubtless been wielded by a gallant
hand."

"Speak not of that," she retorted, sharply, a strange flash in her
eyes. "He who handled it was the bravest, noblest--" She broke off
abruptly, and they left the cell, he locking the door behind him.

Down the dimly lighted passage she walked rapidly, while the jester
tractably and silently followed. His strength, he found, had come back
to him; the joys of freedom imparted new elasticity to his limbs; that
narrow, cheerless way looked brighter than a royal gallery, or Francis'
_Salle des Fetes_. Before him floated the light figure of the
jestress, moving faster and ever faster down the dark corridor, now
veering to the right or left, again ascending or descending well-worn
steps; a tortuous route through the heart of the ancient fortress,
whose mystery seemed dread and covert as that of a prison house.
Confidently, knowing well the puzzling interior plan of the old pile,
she traversed the labyrinth that was to lead them without, finally
pausing before a small door, which she tried.

"Usually it is unlocked," she said, in surprise. "I never knew it
fastened before."

"Is that our only way out?"

"The only safe way. Perhaps one of the keys--"

But he had already knelt before the door and the young girl watched him
with obvious anxiety. He vainly essayed all the keys, save one, and
that he now strove to fit to the lock. It slipped in snugly and the
stubborn bolt shot back.

Entering, he closed the door behind them and hastily looked around,
discovering that they stood in a crypt, the central part of which was
occupied by a burial vault. In the crypt chapels were a number of
statues, in marble and bronze, most of them rude, antique, yet not of
indifferent workmanship, especially one before which the jestress, in
spite of the exigency of the moment, stopped as if impelled by an
irresistible impulse. This monument, so read the inscription, had been
erected by the renowned Constable of Dubrois to his young and faithful
consort, Anne.

But a part of a minute the girl gazed, with a new and softened
expression, upon the marble likeness of the last fair mistress of th