an answer ready. There could be no answer but one. What
could we do? Nothing. We were too late. Too late again! And yet how
dreadful it was to stand still among the cruel, thoughtless mob and see
our friend, the touch of whose hand we knew so well, done to death for
their sport! Done to death as the old woman had said like any rat, not
a soul save ourselves pitying him! Not a soul to turn sick at his cry
of agony, or shudder at the glance of his dying eyes. It was dreadful
indeed.

"Ah, well," muttered a woman beside me to her companion--there were
many women in the crowd--"it is down with the Huguenots, say I! It is
Lorraine is the fine man! But after all yon is a bonny fellow and a
proper, Margot! I saw him leap from roof to roof over Love Lane, as if
the blessed saints had carried him. And him a heretic!"

"It is the black art," the other answered, crossing herself.

"Maybe it is! But he will need it all to give that big man the slip
to-day," replied the first speaker comfortably.

"That devil!" Margot exclaimed, pointing with a stealthy gesture of
hate at the Vidame. And then in a fierce whisper, with inarticulate
threats, she told a story of him, which made me shudder. "He did! And
she in religion too!" she concluded. "May our Lady of Loretto reward
him."

The tale might be true for aught I knew, horrible as it was! I had
heard similar ones attributing things almost as fiendish to him, times
and again; from that poor fellow lying dead on Pavannes' doorstep for
one, and from others besides. As the Vidame in his pacing to and fro
turned towards us, I gazed at him fascinated by his grim visage and
that story. His eye rested on the crowd about us, and I trembled, lest
even at that distance he should recognise us.

And he did! I had forgotten his keenness of sight. His face flashed
suddenly into a grim smile. The tail of his eye resting upon us, and
seeming to forbid us to move, he gave some orders. The colour fled from
my face. To escape indeed was impossible, for we were hemmed in by the
press and could scarcely stir a limb. Yet I did make one effort.

"Croisette!" I muttered he was the rearmost--"stoop down. He may not
have seen you. Stoop down, lad!"

But St. Croix was obstinate and would not stoop. Nay, when one of the
mounted men came, and roughly ordered us into the open, it was
Croisette who pushing past us stepped out first with a lordly air. I,
following him, saw that h