you help her?"

He nodded, striving to say "yes."

"You know your own risk?"

"Yes."

"Her company is death for you both if you are taken."

He stood up very straight. In what strange forms comes happiness to
man!

XXI

LIKE HER ANCESTORS

A sense of insecurity, of impending trouble, seemed to weigh upon us
all that evening--a physical depression, which the sea-wind brought
with its flying scud, wetting the window-panes like fine rain.

At intervals from across the moors came the deadened rolling of
insurgent drums, and in the sky a ruddy reflection of a fire
brightened and waned as the fog thickened or blew inland--an ominous
sign of disorder, possibly even a reflection from that unseen war
raging somewhere beyond the obscured horizon.

It may have been this indefinable foreboding that drew our little
company into a temporary intimacy; it may have been the immense
loneliness of the sea, thundering in thickening darkness, that stilled
our voices to whispers.

Eyre, ill at ease, walked from window to window, looking at the
luminous tints on the ragged edges of the clouds; Sylvia, over her
heavy embroidery, lifted her head gravely at moments, to glance after
him when he halted listless, preoccupied, staring at Speed and
Jacqueline, who were drawing pictures of Arthur and his knights by the
lamp-lit table.

I leaned in the embrasure of the southern window, gazing at my lighted
lanterns, which dangled from the halyards at Saint-Yssel. The soldier
Rolland had so far kept his word--three red lamps glimmered through a
driving mist; the white lanterns hung above, faintly shining.

Full in the firelight of the room sat the young Countess, lost in
reverie, hands clasping the gilt arms of her chair. At her feet dozed
Ange Pitou.

The dignity of a parvenu cat admitted for the first time to unknown
luxury is a lesson. I said this to the young Countess, who smiled
dreamily, watching the play of color over the drift-wood fire. A
ship's plank was burning there, tufted with golden-green flames.
Presently a blaze of purest carmine threw a deeper light into the
room.

"I wonder," she said, "what people sailed in that ship--and when?
Did they perish on this coast when their ship perished? A drift-wood
fire is beautiful, but a little sad, too." She looked up pensively
over her shoulder. "Will you bring a chair to the fire?" she asked.
"We are burning part of a great ship--for our pleasure, monsieur.
Tell me wh