rlhood," she continued, "I loved and was loved by a
Commoner, a man of the people. The good Cure married us secretly. We
were blessed by an infant daughter.

"The family pride of the de Vaudreys was outraged by the so-called
dishonor. Two of the clan found our hiding-place and slew my husband,
then took my baby Louise from my helpless arms. I was brought back to
the chateau and given in marriage to you, after threats of death if I
should ever divulge the secret! Twenty years after, I saw my daughter
as Louise the blind singer--the girl Henriette, whom you sent to
Salpetriere, is her foster-sister. Oh, forgive, forgive--put me away
if you wish, but consider what I have suffered!..."

The strong man, whom neither the fate of Maurice nor of Henriette had
melted, was crying. Gently he lifted up the Countess and clasped her
sobbing in his arms.

"If you had only told me before--" was the only word to which he could
give utterance.

The hellish aspect of his persecutions now stood revealed. Count de
Linieres, in the act of divine forgiveness, resolved to undo wrongs.

But History struck faster.

The avenger Jacques-Forget-Not annihilated pardons. The Linieres and
the other aristocrats were soon to flee for their lives.

CHAPTER XVI

REVOLUTION IS HERE!

The ex-retainer nicknamed "Forget-Not" bore a baleful grudge because
of the cruelties inflicted on his own father many years before by the
Countess's father--the cruel punishment of pouring boiling lead into
the unfortunate tenant's veins: a procedure on which the boy Chevalier
had been taught to look approvingly.

In fact ever since the elder Jean Setain displeased the then Seigneur
of the de Vaudrey estate, the affairs of the tenant family had gone to
wrack and ruin until the middle-aged son was little more than a
landless beggar and an embodied voice calling for vengeance.

The original parties of the quarrel were dead. But the feud (on the
part of Jacques-Forget-Not) had taken on a more personal aspect,
because his own sufferings were involved as well as the memory of his
father's. He had determined to kill the Chevalier, the Countess and
the Count.

In normal times the monomaniac's designs would never have reached
fruition. Now the vast public discontents converted the cringing
ex-tenant or shrieking beggar into a gaunt, long-haired, ferocious
agitator--one of the outstanding crazy figures of Great Crises!

For the Storm--long brewing in seditious