s sudden shriek and my own nervous clamor. It shamed
me heartily.

"Truly, comrade, thou hast good lungs," Jerome told me days afterward.
"It took all our strength to shut thee of thy wind."

When the four men found me a helpless body in their hands, they were
greatly troubled. However, Florine insisted that I be carried to her
room where she could conceal me.

Once there they found means to truss me up like a bale of merchandise
and sling me across the alley again, whence I was conveyed, still
unconscious, through out-of-the-way streets to the Austrian Arms.

And so it was I came to my strength, safe in my own lodgings in Rue St.
Denis, with Florine and her kind-hearted friend to nurse me.

CHAPTER XIII

THE GIRL OF THE WINE SHOP

Youth and health do not long lie idle. Even while I lay recovering my
health, Jerome and I were busy with our plans. Not the least
unforeseen item in what had befallen, was the chance that carried me
into a house where I saw again the "black wolf's head," which brought
once more to mind the history of the d'Artins. But there was still to
come that other happening, the one which bound my whole life, heart and
soul, my love and happiness forever, in with the fortunes of that black
wolf's breed.

As I grew stronger Jerome and I had a long talk. He told me the
morning after I left him, which was Thursday, a veiled woman had
brought him a pair of gauntlets, with the request that he preserve them
carefully. Jerome naturally wanted to know who had sent such a
present. The woman answered no questions, only impressed upon him the
importance of keeping them himself and letting no one have them. She
would not tell whence she came, and when she departed Jerome made a
sign to Claude, who followed. He returned and reported she had entered
the apartments of Mademoiselle de Chartres by a private way.

Verily this was coming close to the King, and to Orleans; these
gauntlets coming from the house of this haughty Bourbon Princess. One
of the gauntlets, of course, contained the papers taken from Yvard, the
same I had confided to Mademoiselle la Princesse. I smiled my
satisfaction that she had been so discreet.

The other packet Jerome found upon me when I was disrobed for bed.

It was many days before Jerome asked me for any details of my
imprisonment, or how it came about there was a dead man in the room
with me. I related the whole circumstance briefly as possible, who
Broussa