olution to
the guillotine, to the blue sky, sunlit, against which it rose--and
beyond.

EPILOGUE

HOME

A green hummock and the blue waters of Chesapeake Bay. Sunlight over the
grass, sunlight over the sea, touching white sails there. A woman sat on
the hummock, a man lay at her feet.

"Jeanne, you are sitting there almost exactly as I have often sat for
hours when I was a youngster, with my chin in my hands, and my elbows on
my knees."

"Am I, dear?"

"Little wife, what are you thinking of?"

"Just my happiness and you. When you used to sit here you never thought
of me."

"No, dear."

"And yonder, all the time, I was waiting for you."

"There came a time, Jeanne, when I believed this spot could never be
dear to me again, when I thought it could never again be home."

"And now, Richard?"

"Now, my darling, I am as a man who is almost too richly blessed. In
this world I have found paradise."

"Of course that isn't really true," she answered, "but I like to hear
you say it."

"Jeanne dear, there is only one regret. I wish my mother could be here
to see you."

"She knows, Richard, never doubt that," Jeanne answered. "When I think
of you, I often think of her too. I am here, in her place. Her boy has
become my husband. I am very thankful to her for my good, brave
husband."

He rose to his knees, put his arm round her, and kissed her.

"You have no regret, Jeanne?"

"None."

"No disappointment in me, in Broadmead, in this land of Virginia?"

"None. But sometimes, Richard, when I see a sail, like that one yonder,
fading into the horizon, going, it may be, toward France, I wonder what
has become of some of those we knew."

"I often wonder, too," said Richard. "Perhaps we shall never know,
Jeanne."

News traveled slowly, and there was little detail in it. The Reign of
Terror had come and gone, its high priests swallowed in the fury which
they had created. Danton had died like a man, Robespierre like a cur;
and then the end--cannon clearing the mob from the streets of Paris. A
new era had dawned for France, but the future was yet on the knees of
the gods. Had Raymond Latour escaped the final catastrophe? Were
Sabatier, and Mercier, and Dubois still in Paris, more honestly employed
than formerly perchance? Or had they all sunk in the final storm, gone
down into night with their sins red upon them? No news of them reached
Broadmead, only a rumor that the Marquis de Lafayette had fallen into