vage at the work or discontinues it. On the present occasion
those in advance recoiled; but the crowd behind them were there to kill
and rob, and when they saw their own dead, they cried out: "Murder!
Murder! Revenge!" The wiser heads went in search of the representative
to the Convention, Malin. The twins, by this time aware of the
disastrous events of the day, suspected Malin of desiring the ruin
of their family, and of causing the arrest of their parents, and the
suspicion soon became a certainty. They posted themselves beneath the
porte-cochere, gun in hand, intending to kill Malin as soon as he made
his appearance; but the countess lost her head; she imagined her house
in ashes and her daughter assassinated, and she blamed the young men for
their heroic defence and compelled them to desist. It was Laurence who
opened the door slightly when Malin summoned the household to admit
him. Seeing her, the representative relied upon the awe he expected to
inspire in a mere child, and he entered the house. To his first words
of inquiry as to why the family were making such a resistance, the girl
replied: "If you really desire to give liberty to France how is it that
you do not protect us in our homes? They are trying to tear down this
house, monsieur, to murder us, and you say we have no right to oppose
force to force!"

Malin stood rooted to the ground.

"You, the son of a mason employed by the Grand Marquis to build his
castle!" exclaimed Marie-Paul, "you have let them drag our father to
prison--you have believed calumnies!"

"He shall be released at once," said Malin, who thought himself lost
when he saw each youth clutch his weapon convulsively.

"You owe your life to that promise," said Marie-Paul, solemnly. "If it
is not fulfilled to-night we shall find you again."

"As to that howling populace," said Laurence, "If you do not send them
away, the next blood will be yours. Now, Monsieur Malin, leave this
house!"

The Conventionalist did leave it, and he harangued the crowd, dwelling
on the sacred rights of the domestic hearth, the habeas corpus and
the English "home." He told them that the law and the people were
sovereigns, that the law _was_ the people, and that the people could
only act through the law, and that power was vested in the law. The
particular law of personal necessity made him eloquent, and he managed
to disperse the crowd. But he never forgot the contemptuous expression
of the two brothers, nor th