directly, or je
m'en lave les mains."

"I will repeat what you say," answered Guillot, sullenly, "Is this all?"

"All for the present," said Dalibard, slowly drawing on his gloves, and
retreating towards the door. The Chouan watched him with a suspicious
and sinister eye; and as the Provencal's hand was on the latch, he laid
his own rough grasp on Dalibard's shoulder,--

"I know not how it is, Monsieur Dalibard, but I mistrust you."

"Distrust is natural and prudent to all who conspire," replied the
scholar, quietly. "I do not ask you to confide in me. Your employers
bade you seek me: I have mentioned my conditions; let them decide."

"You carry it off well, Monsieur Dalibard, and I am under a solemn oath,
which poor George made me take, knowing me to be a hot-headed, honest
fellow,--mauvaise tete, if you will,--that I will keep my hand off
pistol and knife upon mere suspicion; that nothing less than his word,
or than clear and positive proof of treachery, shall put me out of good
humour and into warm blood. But bear this with you, Monsieur Dalibard:
if I once discover that you use our secrets to betray them; should
George see you, and one hair of his head come to injury through your
hands,--I will wring your neck as a housewife wrings a pullet's."

"I don't doubt your strength or your ferocity, Pierre Guillot; but my
neck will be safe: you have enough to do to take care of your own. Au
revoir."

With a tone and look of calm and fearless irony, the scholar thus spoke,
and left the room; but when he was on the stairs, he paused, and caught
at the balustrade,--the sickness as of terror at some danger past, or
to be, came over him; and this contrast between the self-command,
or simulation, which belongs to moral courage, and the feebleness of
natural and constitutional cowardice, would have been sublime if shown
in a noble cause. In one so corrupt, it but betrayed a nature doubly
formidable; for treachery and murder hatch their brood amidst the folds
of a hypocrite's cowardice.

While thus the interview is going on between Dalibard and the
conspirator, we must bestow a glance upon the Provencal's home.

In an apartment in one of the principal streets between the Boulevards
and the Rue St. Honore, a boy and a woman sat side by side, conversing
in whispers. The boy was Gabriel Varney, the woman Lucretia Dalibard.
The apartment was furnished in the then modern taste, which affected
classical forms; and though not wi