she
choose her bearer--"

"A murrain on your finickings!" he burst out. "She may die whilst we are
haggling over the right to help her. Take her up quick, man, and
begone!"

"But bethink you, Dick," I urged; "if you are taken, you have one chance
in ten of faring as an officer and a prisoner of war. For me 'tis a
spy's death as swift as they can drag me to it."

Now you will know, my dears, how much I loved these two when I could
twist a cord of such mean fiber to bind them closer together. Richard's
eyes flashed and his lip curled.

"Overlook it in me, if you can," he said, with fine scorn. "I had not
thought upon the peril of it." And with that he took her in his arms as
she had been a child to be carried, and I swung the door for him. But
on the threshold he gave me back my sorry little subterfuge. "Once more,
your forgiveness, Jack. I knew well you were but lying to give me
precedence. Can you trust me with her?"

"Aye, dear lad; now and ever," said I; and so I pushed him out.

After he was gone I made shift to lead the horses through the narrow
passage and out by a rear door, giving them a friendly slap to point
them toward the stables.

This done I went back to my immurement, and I know not how long it was
that I paced a weary sentry beat up and down the narrow limits of the
wine cellar, alone with such thoughts as go to make the sum of that
despair which follows hard upon the heels of some climaxing catastrophe.
But I do know that, as the hours dragged on leadenshod, a slow fever of
impatience came to dry the blood in my veins; to make me hunger and
thirst for leave to say the final word to Father Matthieu, and so to be
set at liberty to find the bottom of the pit into which a mocking fate
had plunged me.

'Twas all over now. My dear lad was told, and he had forgiven me; the
persecuting, plotting factor was effaced, and he could never trouble my
sweet lady more. Between the two I loved there stood only the shadow of
the marriage, and this the good priest would presently help me to
dispel.

And after that ... I dared not look beyond. There is a way beset with
lions, and any man who bears the name of man in honor may draw his sword
and fix his eye upon the goal and hew his path to it, joying in the
conflict. But there is also another way, a desert trail owning no peril
more affrighting than its own dread waste and limitless monotony; and
when his eyes behold the dismal prospect, and his feet have presse