not repent. I was the instrument of a national
principle. Your friends were not sacrificed for any ends of mine."

'She thereupon withheld her hand, and clambered up unassisted. He went
on, ascending the Look-out Hill, and disappearing over the brow. Her way
was in the same direction, her errand being to bring home the two young
girls under her charge, who had gone to the cliff for an airing. When
she joined them at the top she saw his solitary figure at the further
edge, standing motionless against the sea. All the while that she
remained with her pupils he stood without turning, as if looking at the
frigates in the roadstead, but more probably in meditation, unconscious
where he was. In leaving the spot one of the children threw away half a
sponge-biscuit that she had been eating. Passing near it he stooped,
picked it up carefully, and put it in his pocket.

'Mademoiselle V--- came homeward, asking herself, "Can he be starving?"

'From that day he was invisible for so long a time that she thought he
had gone away altogether. But one evening a note came to her, and she
opened it trembling.

'"I am here ill," it said, "and, as you know, alone. There are one or
two little things I want done, in case my death should occur,--and I
should prefer not to ask the people here, if it could be avoided. Have
you enough of the gift of charity to come and carry out my wishes
before it is too late?"

'Now so it was that, since seeing him possess himself of the broken cake,
she had insensibly begun to feel something that was more than curiosity,
though perhaps less than anxiety, about this fellow-countryman of hers;
and it was not in her nervous and sensitive heart to resist his appeal.
She found his lodging (to which he had removed from the Old Rooms inn for
economy) to be a room over a shop, half-way up the steep and narrow
street of the old town, to which the fashionable visitors seldom
penetrated. With some misgiving she entered the house, and was admitted
to the chamber where he lay.

'"You are too good, too good," he murmured. And presently, "You need not
shut the door. You will feel safer, and they will not understand what we
say."

'"Are you in want, Monsieur? Can I give you--"

'"No, no. I merely want you to do a trifling thing or two that I have
not strength enough to do myself. Nobody in the town but you knows who I
really am--unless you have told?"

'"I have not told . . . I though