his here partly lest it should be thought after what I have
just told of Croisette that there was anything of the woman about
him--save the tenderness; and partly to show that we acted at this
crisis each after his manner. While Croisette turned pale and
trembled, and hid his eyes, I stood dazed, looking from the desolate
house to the face stiffening in the sunshine, and back again;
wondering, though I had seen scores of dead faces since daybreak, and a
plenitude of suffering in all dreadful shapes, how Providence could let
this happen to us. To us! In his instincts man is as selfish as any
animal that lives.

I saw nothing indeed of the dead face and dead house after the first
convincing glance. I saw instead with hot, hot eyes the old castle at
home, the green fields about the brook, and the grey hills rising from
them; and the terrace, and Kit coming to meet us, Kit with white face
and parted lips and avid eyes that questioned us! And we with no
comfort to give her, no lover to bring back to her!

A faint noise behind as of a sign creaking in the wind, roused me from
this most painful reverie. I turned round, not quickly or in surprise
or fear. Rather in the same dull wonder. The upper part of the
bookseller's door was ajar. It was that I had heard opened. An old
woman was peering out at us.

As our eyes met, she made a slight movement to close the door again.
But I did not stir, and seeming to be reassured by a second glance, she
nodded to me in a stealthy fashion. I drew a step nearer, listlessly.
"Pst! Pst!" she whispered. Her wrinkled old face, which was like a
Normandy apple long kept, was soft with pity as she looked at
Croisette. "Pst!"

"Well!" I said, mechanically.

"Is he taken?" she muttered.

"Who taken?" I asked stupidly.

She nodded towards the forsaken house, and answered, "The young lord
who lodged there? Ah! sirs," she continued, "he looked gay and
handsome, if you'll believe me, as he came from the king's court yester
even! As bonny a sight in his satin coat, and his ribbons, as my eyes
ever saw! And to think that they should be hunting him like a rat
to-day!"

The woman's words were few and simple. But what a change they made in
my world! How my heart awoke from its stupor, and leapt up with a new
joy and a new-born hope! "Did he get away?" I cried eagerly. "Did he
escape, mother, then?"

"Ay, that he did!" she replied quickly. "That poor fellow, yonder--he