arms until her little feet
were half-way down the ladder. She uttered one or two faint
exclamations, but was happily too frightened to cry out.

"Now, Mr. Barclay," hoarsely whispered Caudel, "you kitch hold of her,
sir."

I grasped the ladder with one hand, and passed my arm round her waist;
my stature made the feat an easy one; thus holding her to me I sprang
back, then for an instant strained her to my heart with a whisper of
joy, gratitude, and encouragement.

"You are as brave as you are true and sweet, Grace."

"Oh, Herbert!" she panted, "I can think of nothing. I am very wicked
and feel horribly frightened."

"Mr. Barclay," softly called Caudel from the balcony, "what's to be
done with this here ladder?"

"Let it be, let it be," I answered. "Bear a hand, Caudel, and come
down."

He was alongside of us in a trice, pulling on his boots. I held my
darling's hand, and the three of us made for the hole in the hedge with
all possible speed. But the cabbages were very much in the way of
Grace's dress, and so urgent was the need to make haste that, I
believe, in my fashion of helping her, I carried her one way or another
more than half the distance across that wide tract of kitchen-garden
stuff.

The dog continued to bark. I asked Grace if the brute belonged to the
house, and she answered yes. There seemed little doubt, from the
persistency of the creature's deep delivery, that it scented some sort
of mischief going forward, despite its kennel standing some
considerable distance away on the other side of the house. I glanced
back as Caudel was squeezing through the hole--I had told him to go
first to make sure that all was right with the aperture, and to receive
and help my sweetheart across the ditch--I glanced back, I say, in this
brief pause; but the building showed as an impenetrable shadow against
the winking brilliance of the sky hovering over and past it rich with
the radiance in places of meteoric dust; no light gleamed; the
night-hush, deep as death, was upon the chateau.

In a few moments my captain and I had carefully handed Grace through
the hole and got her safe in the lane, and off we started, keeping well
in the deep gloom cast by the convent wall, walking swiftly, yet
noiselessly, and scarcely fetching our breath till we were clear of the
lane, with the broad, glimmering St. Omer Road running in a rise upon
our left.

By the aid of the three or four lamps we had passed I managed very