agony in all his joints, so keen was the sense of vague,
indefinable coming evil which took possession of him; but he went
forward at once, and found Corentin on the stairs with a taper in his
hand.

"We are not very harsh," he said to Michu; "we might have seized
your ci-devants any day for the last week; but we knew they were
reinstated--You're a tough fellow to deal with, and you gave us too
much trouble not to make us anxious to satisfy our curiosity about this
hiding-place of yours."

"I'd give something," cried Michu, "to know how and by whom we have been
sold."

"If that puzzles you, old fellow," said Peyrade, laughing, "look at your
horses' shoes, and you'll see that you betrayed yourselves."

"Well, there need be no rancor!" said Corentin, whistling for the
captain of gendarmerie and their horses.

"So that rascally Parisian blacksmith who shoed the horses in the
English fashion and left Cinq-Cygne only the other day was their spy!"
thought Michu. "They must have followed our tracks when the ground was
damp. Well, we're quits now!"

Michu consoled himself by thinking that the discovery was of no
consequence, as the young men were now safe, Frenchmen once more, and at
liberty. Yet his first presentiment was a true one. The police, like the
Jesuits, have the one virtue of never abandoning their friends or their
enemies.

Old d'Hauteserre returned from Paris and was more than surprised not to
be the first to bring the news. Durieu prepared a succulent dinner,
the servants donned their best clothes, and the household impatiently
awaited the exiles, who arrived about four o'clock, happy,--and yet
humiliated, for they found they were to be under police surveillance for
two years, obliged to present themselves at the prefecture every month
and ordered to remain in the commune of Cinq-Cygne during the said two
years. "I'll send you the papers for signature," the prefect said to
them. "Then, in the course of a few months, you can ask to be relieved
of these conditions, which are imposed on all of Pichegru's accomplices.
I will back your request."

These restrictions, fairly deserved, rather dispirited the young men,
but Laurence laughed at them.

"The Emperor of the French," she said, "was badly brought up; he has not
yet acquired the habit of bestowing favors graciously."

The party found all the inhabitants of the chateau at the gates, and a
goodly proportion of the people of the village waiting on the r