red in the affirmative. "To-morrow?" he questioned.

"Yes," we answered; and expected him to continue the conversation. But
instead he became silent, gazing abstractedly at the table; and what
with our meal, and our own talk we had almost forgotten him again, when
looking up, I found him at my elbow, holding out in silence a small
piece of paper.

I started his face was so grave. But seeing that there were
half-a-dozen guests of a meaner sort at another table close by, I
guessed that he merely wished to make a private communication to us;
and hastened to take the paper and read it. It contained a scrawl of
four words only--

"Va chasser l'Idole."

No more. I looked at him puzzled; able to make nothing out of it. St.
Croix wrinkled his brow over it with the same result. It was no good
handing it to Marie, therefore.

"You do not understand?" the stranger continued, as he put the scrap
of paper back in his pouch.

"No," I answered, shaking my head. We had all risen out of respect to
him, and were standing a little group about him.

"Just so; it is all right then," he answered, looking at us as it
seemed to me with grave good-nature. "It is nothing. Go your way.
But--I have a son yonder not much younger than you, young gentlemen.
And if you had understood, I should have said to you, 'Do not go!
There are enough sheep for the shearer!'"

He was turning away with this oracular saying when Croisette touched
his sleeve. "Pray can you tell us if it be true," the lad said
eagerly, "that the Admiral de Coligny was wounded yesterday?"

"It is true," the other answered, turning his grave eyes on his
questioner, while for a moment his stern look failed him, "It is true,
my boy," he added with an air of strange solemnity. "Whom the Lord
loveth, He chasteneth. And, God forgive me for saying it, whom He
would destroy, He first maketh mad."

He had gazed with peculiar favour at Croisette's girlish face, I
thought: Marie and I were dark and ugly by the side of the boy. But he
turned from him now with a queer, excited gesture, thumping his
gold-headed cane on the floor. He called his servants in a loud,
rasping voice, and left the room in seeming anger, driving them before
him, the one carrying his dag, and the other, two candles.

When I came down early next morning, the first person I met was Blaise
Bure. He looked rather fiercer and more shabby by daylight than
candlelight. But he saluted me respectful