te servant from the inn, still weeping and
bemoaning.

The hostler was standing in the gateway of the auberge as he rode in,
his horse already sweating and with foam about its mouth from the pace
it had come; and throwing himself off it St. Georges advanced to the
man and asked him if he had heard any news of his missing child.

"Nay," he replied. "Nay. No news. _Mon Dieu!_ I know not who could
have stolen it. 'Tis marvellous. 'Twas none of D'Arpajou's troop, to
be sure. And there were no others."

"None lurking about the inn last night--none sleeping here who might
have stolen into the girl's room when she quitted it? Oh! man, I tell
you," he cried, almost beside himself with grief, "there are those who
would have tracked it across France to get at it!" And then, overcome
with remorse at having left the child in any other custody but his
own, though he had thought it was for the best when he did so, he
murmured: "Why, why, did I not keep it with me? My arm sheltered it
when the attack was made at Aignay-le-Duc; no worse than that could
have befallen it."

"None lurking about," the man repeated, looking up at the great
soldier while he chewed a straw. "None lurking about. _Mon Dieu!_ why
did I not think of that before?"

"There _was_ one!" St. Georges exclaimed, "there was one, then? You
saw some man--I know it; I see it in your face. For God's sake, answer
me! Who? Who was it?"

But the hostler was a slow man--one whose mind moved cumbrously, and
again he muttered to himself: "No! No, it could not be he. It----"

"Could not be whom? Oh, do not torture me! Tell me! Tell me!"

"There was one," the other replied, "who rode in last night, seeking a
bed for himself and a stall for his horse. Yet he could have neither
here. We were full, and we knew too that D'Arpajou's horse were on the
road. So we sent him away to the _Cheval Rouge_, yet I saw him again
late at night in the yard, and, asking him his business, he said that
he had lost his glove when here----"

"My God!" St. Georges exclaimed, more to himself than the man. "Was it
De Roquemaure?"

"De Roquemaure!" the other exclaimed. "De Roquemaure! _Par hasard_,
does monsieur mean the young marquis?"

"Yes, yes. You know him--must know him, since his mother's manoir is
so near here. Answer me," and in his fervour he grasped the man's arm
firmly, "_was it he_?"

The hostler wrenched his arm away from the soldier's nervous grasp;
then he answered emphatically