. Why did I not stick to it
that I was an Irelander?"

But, somehow, the answer seemed like an arrow from a bow shot at a
venture, entering in between the joints of the marshal's armour.

"Do you think so?" he said, with some startled anxiety, yet without
surprise; "older than at Thrieve? I do not believe it. It is
impossible. Why, I grow younger and younger every day. It has been
promised me that I should."

And setting his elbow on the sill of the window, Gilles de Retz looked
thoughtfully out upon the cool dusk of the rose garden. Then all at
once it came to him what was implied in that unlucky speech of
Laurence's. The grim intensity returned to his eyes as he erected
himself and bent his brows, white with premature age, upon the boy,
who confronted him with the fearlessness born of youth and ignorance.

"Ah," he said, "this is interesting; you have changed your nation. You
were an Irishman to De Sille in Paris, to the clerk Henriet, and to
the choir at Machecoul. Yet to me you admit in the very first words
you speak that you are a Scot and saw me at the Castle of Thrieve."

Even yet the old Laurence might have turned the corner. He had, as we
know, graduated as a liar ready and expert. He had daily practised his
art upon the Abbot. He had even, though more rarely, succeeded with
his father. But now in the day of his necessity the power and wit had
departed from him.

To the lord of the Castle of Machecoul Laurence simply could not lie.
Ringed as he was by evil, his spirit became strong for good, and he
testified like one in the place of final judgment, when the earthly
lendings of word and phrase and covering excuse must all be cast aside
and the soul stand forth naked and nakedly answer that which is
required.

"I am a Scot," said Laurence, briefly, and without explanation.

"Come with me into my chamber," said the marshal, and turned to
precede him thither.

And without word of complaint or backward glance, the lad followed the
great lord to the chamber, into which so many had gone before him of
the young and beautiful of the earth, and whence so few had come out
alive.

As he passed the threshold, Laurence put into his mouth the elastic
pellet which had been given him by Blaise Renouf, the choir-master's
son.

The marshal threw himself upon a chair, reclining with a wearied air
upon the hands which were clasped behind his head. In the action of
throwing himself back one could see that Gilles de Re