ted against them by the authorities, who had
abolished le bon Dieu.

But Armand had found refuge there eighteen months ago, on his way to
Calais, when Percy had risked his life in order to save hi--Armand--from
death. He could have groaned aloud with the anguish of this
recollection. But Marguerite's aching nerves had thrilled at the name.

The Chateau d'Ourde! The Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre! That was the
place which Percy had mentioned in his letter, the place where he had
given rendezvous to de Batz. Sir Andrew had said that the Dauphin could
not possibly be there, yet Percy was leading his enemies thither,
and had given the rendezvous there to de Batz. And this despite that
whatever plans, whatever hopes, had been born in his mind when he was
still immured in the Conciergerie prison must have been set at naught by
the clever counter plot of Chauvelin and Heron.

"At the merest suspicion that you have played us false, at a hint that
you have led us into an ambush, or if merely our hopes of finding Capet
at the end of the journey are frustrated, the lives of your wife and of
your friend are forfeit to us, and they will both be shot before your
eyes."

With these words, with this precaution, those cunning fiends had
effectually not only tied the schemer's hands, but forced him either to
deliver the child to them or to sacrifice his wife and his friend.

The impasse was so horrible that she could not face it even in her
thoughts. A strange, fever-like heat coursed through her veins, yet
left her hands icy-cold; she longed for, yet dreaded, the end of the
journey--that awful grappling with the certainty of coming death.
Perhaps, after all, Percy, too, had given up all hope. Long ago he had
consecrated his life to the attainment of his own ideals; and there
was a vein of fatalism in him; perhaps he had resigned himself to the
inevitable, and his only desire now was to give up his life, as he had
said, in the open, beneath God's sky, to draw his last breath with the
storm-clouds tossed through infinity above him, and the murmur of the
wind in the trees to sing him to rest.

Crecy was gradually fading into the distance, wrapped in a mantle of
damp and mist. For a long while Marguerite could see the sloping slate
roofs glimmering like steel in the grey afternoon light, and the quaint
church tower with its beautiful lantern, through the pierced stonework
of which shone patches of the leaden sky.

Then a sudden twist