and beard?"

"That is he, except that his beard has turned gray and his hair is
white; do you know him?" asked the host.

"I have seen him once," replied Grimaud, a cloud darkening his
countenance at the picture so suddenly summoned to the bar of
recollection.

At this instant a second cry, less piercing than the first, but followed
by prolonged groaning, was heard.

The three listeners looked at one another in alarm.

"We must see what it is," said Grimaud.

"It sounds like the cry of one who is being murdered," murmured the
host.

"Mon Dieu!" said the woman, crossing herself.

If Grimaud was slow in speaking, we know that he was quick to act; he
sprang to the door and shook it violently, but it was bolted on the
other side.

"Open the door!" cried the host; "open it instantly, sir monk!"

No reply.

"Unfasten it, or I will break it in!" said Grimaud.

The same silence, and then, ere the host could oppose his design,
Grimaud seized a pair of pincers he perceived in a corner and forced the
bolt. The room was inundated with blood, dripping from the mattresses
upon which lay the wounded man, speechless; the monk had disappeared.

"The monk!" cried the host; "where is the monk?"

Grimaud sprang toward an open window which looked into the courtyard.

"He has escaped by this means," exclaimed he.

"Do you think so?" said the host, bewildered; "boy, see if the mule
belonging to the monk is still in the stable."

"There is no mule," cried he to whom this question was addressed.

The host clasped his hands and looked around him suspiciously, whilst
Grimaud knit his brows and approached the wounded man, whose worn, hard
features awoke in his mind such awful recollections of the past.

"There can be no longer any doubt but that it is himself," said he.

"Does he still live?" inquired the innkeeper.

Making no reply, Grimaud opened the poor man's jacket to feel if the
heart beat, whilst the host approached in his turn; but in a moment they
both fell back, the host uttering a cry of horror and Grimaud becoming
pallid. The blade of a dagger was buried up to the hilt in the left side
of the executioner.

"Run! run for help!" cried Grimaud, "and I will remain beside him here."

The host quitted the room in agitation, and as for his wife, she had
fled at the sound of her husband's cries.

32. The Absolution.

This is what had taken place: We have seen that it was not of his
own free will, but,