of that, if I must drink."

Guida caught up a hanap of water from the dresser, and passed it to him.
Her fingers trembled a little. His were steady enough as he took the
hanap and drank off the water at a gulp. Again she filled it and again
he drank. The blood was running in a tiny little stream down his cheek.
She caught her handkerchief from her girdle impulsively, and gently
wiped it away.

"Let me bandage the wound," she said eagerly. Her eyes were alight with
compassion, certainly not because it was the dissipated French invader,
M. Savary dit Detricand,--no one knew that he was the young Comte
de Tournay of the House of Vaufontaine, but because he was a wounded
fellow-creature. She would have done the same for the poor beganne,
Dormy Jamais, who still prowled the purlieus of St. Heliers.

It was clear, however, that Detricand felt differently. The moment she
touched him he became suddenly still. He permitted her to wash the
blood from his temple and forehead, to stanch it first with brandied
jeru-leaves, then with cobwebs, and afterwards to bind it with her own
kerchief.

Detricand thrilled at the touch of the warm, tremulous fingers. He had
never been quite so near her before. His face was not far from hers. Now
her breath fanned him. As he bent his head for the bandaging, he could
see the soft pulsing of her bosom, and hear the beating of her heart.
Her neck was so full and round and soft, and her voice--surely he had
never heard a voice so sweet and strong, a tone so well poised, so
resonantly pleasant.

When she had finished, he had an impulse to catch the hand as it dropped
away from his forehead, and kiss it; not as he had kissed many a hand,
hotly one hour and coldly the next, but with an unpurchasable kind of
gratitude characteristic of this especial sort of sinner. He was just
young enough, and there was still enough natural health in him, to know
the healing touch of a perfect decency, a pure truth of spirit. Yet
he had been drunk the night before, drunk with three noncommissioned
officers--and he a gentleman, in spite of all, as could be plainly seen.

He turned his head away from the girl quickly, and looked straight into
the eyes of her grandfather.

"I'll tell you how it was, Sieur de Mauprat," said he. "I was crossing
the Place du Vier Prison when a rascal threw a cleaver at me from a
window. If it had struck me on the head--well, the Royal Court would
have buried me, and without a slab to