gether understand," he said. "They scarcely watched you at
all, it seems?"

"Thank God for their carelessness!" put in Mrs. a Cleeve fervently.

"And you escaped. There was nothing to prevent? They hadn't exacted any
sort of parole?"

"Well, there was a sort of promise,"--the boy flushed hotly--"not what
you'd call a real promise. The fellow--a sort of prefect in a tricolour
sash--had us up in a room before him, and gabbled through some form of
words that not one of us rightly understood. I heard afterwards some
pretty stories of this gentleman. He had been a contractor to the late
Republic, in horse-forage, and had swindled the Government (people said)
to the tune of some millions of francs. Marengo finished him: he had been
speculating against it on the sly, which lost his plunder and the most of
his credit. On the remains of it he had managed to scrape into this
prefecture. A nice sort of man to administer oaths!"

Father Halloran turned impatiently to the window, and, leaning a
hand on one of the stone mullions, gazed out upon the small garden.
Daylight was failing, and the dusk out there on the few autumn flowers
seemed one with the chill shadow touching his hopes and robbing them of
colour. He shivered: and as with a small shiver men sometimes greet a
deadly sickness, so Father Halloran's shiver presaged the doom of a life's
hope. He had been Walter's tutor, and had built much on the boy: he had
read warnings from time to time, and tried at once to obey them and
persuade himself that they were not serious--that his anxiety magnified
them. If honour could be inherited, it surely ran in Walter's blood; in
honour--the priest could assert with a good conscience--he had been
instructed. And yet--

The lad had turned to his mother, and went on with a kind of sullen
eagerness: "There were sixteen of us, including an English clergyman, his
wife and two young children, and a young couple travelling on their
honeymoon. It wasn't as if they had taken our word and let us go: they
marched us off at once to special quarters--billeted us all in one house,
over a greengrocer's shop, with a Government _concierge_ below stairs to
keep watch on our going and coming. A roll was called every night at
eight--you see, there was no liberty about it. The whole thing was a
fraud. Father Halloran may say what he likes, but there are two sides to
a bargain; and if one party breaks faith, what becomes of the other's
prom