o will doubtless retail
it all to the king." Then addressing himself to the watchman on the
southern gate, he cried:

"Open there, and let me in!"

"'Tis too late," the man replied, looking down at him through the
fast-gathering night. "None enter Dijon now after four of the evening.
Ten thousand devils! why could you not have come half an hour earlier?
Yet there is a good auberge outside the walls, and----"

"Open, I say!" called up the horseman. "I ride by the king's orders,
and have to present myself to the Marquis Phelypeaux. Open, I say!"

"_Tiens!_" exclaimed the watchman, peering down at him through the
gray snow and rime with which was now mixed the blackness of the
oncoming night. "You ride in the king's name and would see the
marquis. _C'est autre chose!_ Yet I must be careful. Wait, I will
descend. Draw up to the _grille_ of the gate."

The horseman did as the watchman bid him, looking down once at the
child in his arms, whose face had become uncovered for a moment, and
smiling again into its eyes, while he muttered, "Sweet, ere long you
shall have a softer couch"; then, as the _grille_ opened and the
watchman's ruddy face--all blotched with the consumption of frequent
_pigeolets_ of Macon and other wines--appeared at the grating, he bent
down toward him as though to submit his own face to observation.

"Your name and following?" grunted the man.

"Georges St. Georges. Lieutenant in the Chevaux-Legers of the
Nivernois. In garrison at the Fort de Joux, between Verrieres and
Pontarlier. Recalled to Paris by order of the king. Ordered to visit
the Marquis Phelypeaux. Are you answered, friend?"

"What do you carry in your arms? It seems precious by the way you
clasp it to you."

"It is precious. It is a child--my child."

"_Tiens!_ A strange burden for a soldier _en route_ from the frontier
to Paris. Where is the mother?"

"In her grave! Now open the gate."

For answer the bolts and bars were heard creaking, and presently one
half of the great door swung back to admit the rider. And he,
dismounting, led his horse through it by one hand, while with the
other he clasped his child to his breast beneath the cloak.

Standing in the warder's lodge was a woman--doubtless his wife--who
had heard the conversation; for as St. Georges entered she came
forward and exclaimed gently:

"A cold, long ride, monsieur, for such as that," and she touched with
her finger the rounded back of the child as it lay curle