uestion if his father had died in
battle--monseigneur with a polite bow said he would ask him no more
impertinent questions, and turned the conversation by exclaiming:

"But you must be weary, monsieur. You would rest, I am sure. I will
call Pierre to show you to your room. Your child will sleep better at
the 'Ours' than you will do here, since my accommodation is not of the
first order, owing to my being able to inhabit the house so little.
But we have done our best. We have done our best."

"I thank you," the soldier said, rising from his chair. "Now,
monseigneur, let me pay my farewells to you at the same time I say
'Good-night.' I propose to ride to-morrow at daybreak, and if possible
to reach Bar by night. Though much I doubt doing so; my horse is jaded
already, and can scarce compass a league an hour. And 'tis more than
twenty leagues from here, I take it."

"Ay, 'tis. More like twenty-five. And you have, you know, a burden.
You carry weight. There is the little child."

"Yes, there is the child."

"You guard it carefully, Monsieur St. Georges. By the way, you have
not told me. Where is its mother, your wife?"

Again the soldier answered as he had before answered to the watchman's
wife--yet, he knew not why, he felt more repugnance in speaking of his
dead wife to this strange bishop than he had when addressing either
that simple woman or the landlady of the "Ours." But it had to be
done--he could not make a secret of what was, in fact, no secret. So
he answered, speaking rapidly, as though desirous of getting his
answer over:

"She is dead. Our existence together was short. We loved each other
dearly, but it pleased God to take her from me. She died a year after
our marriage, in giving birth to the babe."

Phelypeaux bowed his head gravely, as though, perhaps, intending
thereby to express sympathy with the other, and said, "It was sad,
very sad." Then he continued:

"And madame--_pauvre dame!_--was she, too, English, or of some French
family?"

"She was, monseigneur, a simple French girl. Of no family--such as
you, monseigneur, would know of. A girl of the people, of the
_bourgeoisie_. Yet I loved her; she became my wife, and now--now"--and
he looked meditatively down into the ashes of the (by this time)
charred and burnt-out logs--"I have no wife. That is all. Monseigneur,
permit me to wish you good-night."

The bishop rang the bell, and while they waited for Pierre to come, he
said:

"You asked