ster of the town, he would be the richest man in the
town, his wife might repay with interest and advantage the dull bovine
scorn to which the city dames had treated her mother. The widow
permitted herself to hope. Her child was beautiful, with the creamy
fairness of Gueldres, and as pure as the sky. The young man was gay and
handsome; qualities which made their due impression on the elder woman's
heart, long unfamiliar with them. So, for more than a year he had had
the run of the house, he had been one of the family; and then one day he
had disappeared, and then one other day----

Oh, God of vengeance! She paused in the darkening street, as she thought
of it. Beside her a long window, warmly curtained, sent out a stream of
ruddy light. From the opposite house issued cheery voices and tinkling
laughter, and the steam of cooking. And before and behind, whichever way
she looked, firelight flashed through diamond panes and glowed in the
heart of green bottle-glass. Out in the street men shouldered past her,
talking blithely; and in distant kitchens cups clinked and ware
clattered, and every house--every house from garret to parlour, seemed
to her a home happy and gleeful. A home; and _her_ home! She stood at
the thought and cursed them; cursed them, and like the echo of her
whispered words the solemn boom of a cannon floated over the town.

A chance passer, seeing her stand thus, caught the whiteness of her
face, and thought her afraid. "Cheer up, mother!" he said over his
shoulder, "they are all bark and little bite!"

"I would they bit to the bone!" she cried in fury.

But luckily he was gone too far to hear or to understand; and, resuming
her course, she hurried on, her head bowed. A few minutes' walking
brought her to the foot of the stone steps that, in two parallel
flights, led up to the low-browed door of her house. There, as she set
her foot on the lowest stair, and wearily began the ascent, a man
advanced out of the darkness and touched her sleeve. For an instant she
thought it _the_ man, and she caught her breath and stepped back. But
his first word showed her her mistake.

"You live here?" he said abruptly. "Can I come in?"

In ordinary times his foreign accent and the glint of a pistol-barrel,
which caught her eye as he spoke, would have set her on her guard. But
to-night she had nothing to lose--nothing, it seemed to her, to hope.
She scarcely looked at the man. "As you please," she said dully. "What
do