down, looked at him. Then with a bound
he sprang up again, exclaiming: "He here! Heaven and earth! what
brings him here? How comes he in this mystery? What--what does it
mean, what portend?"

"You know him?"

"Yes, I know him."

The man stretched upon the pallet was Pierre, the Bishop of Lodeve's
man-servant!

* * * * *

"Speak!" said St. Georges to him a moment later, smothering for the
time his wonder and astonishment. "Speak if you can. One word from you
may alter my whole life, my child's life. Speak ere you die."

It seemed, however, that he would never speak again. But, also, it
seemed as if all consciousness was not gone from him yet--as if he
recognised the man kneeling once more at his side, while again the
woman held the lamp above them. As far as he was able with his failing
strength, he endeavoured to shrink from St. Georges while as he did so
his eyes, distended either with fear or horror, glared at him. But
from his mouth there came no sound but the laboured breathing.

Again St. Georges besought him to speak; plied him with questions.
Was the child taken from him Dorine; by whom had it been taken; how
had he whom St. Georges had never seen until he slept at the bishop's,
and whom he had left at Dijon, found his way here only to be murdered?
And still no answer came, while once the dying man tried with his
feeble hand to push St. Georges away, and still stared in ghastly
horror at him.

At last the end arrived. The breathing grew faster and faster and more
laboured; it rattled more horribly in his chest; a spasm convulsed
him, and he sank back exhausted, while from his face and throat which
were all uncovered a heavy sweat poured. Then suddenly he raised
himself to almost a sitting posture with his hands, and, with a
rolling glance that seemed to take in all the hut, he sank back slowly
again. Yet as he did so his lips moved, and a whisper came from
them--a whisper that seemed to frame the words "De Roquemaure." A
moment after he was dead.

* * * * *

"Tell me all you know," St. Georges said to the woman a few moments
later. "How he came here, how he was set upon and done to death? I
must ride on and on to-night, yet ere long, if I can compass it, I
will return to Troyes and never leave it until I have found my child
and know all. Tell me."

"He came here," she said, "five days ago--was brought here by me, for
I saw him attacked