ce,
moving to and fro about their piled arms.

Tignonville paused before he came within the radius of the firelight,
and, turning, bade his servants take their way home. "I shall follow,
but I have business first," he added curtly.

The elder of the two demurred. "The streets are not too safe," he said.
"In two hours or less, my lord, it will be midnight. And then--"

"Go, booby; do you think I am a child?" his master retorted angrily.
"I've my sword and can use it. I shall not be long. And do you hear,
men, keep a still tongue, will you?"

The men, country fellows, obeyed reluctantly, and with a full intention
of sneaking after him the moment he had turned his back. But he
suspected them of this, and stood where he was until they had passed the
fire, and could no longer detect his movements. Then he plunged quickly
into the Rue Baillet, gained through it the Rue du Roule, and traversing
that also, turned to the right into the Rue Ferronerie, the main
thoroughfare, east and west, of Paris. Here he halted in front of the
long, dark outer wall of the Cemetery of the Innocents, in which, across
the tombstones and among the sepulchres of dead Paris, the living Paris
of that day, bought and sold, walked, gossiped, and made love.

About him things were to be seen that would have seemed stranger to him
had he been less strange to the city. From the quarter of the markets
north of him, a quarter which fenced in the cemetery on two sides, the
same dull murmur proceeded, which Mademoiselle de Vrillac had remarked an
hour earlier. The sky above the cemetery glowed with reflected light,
the cause of which was not far to seek, for every window of the tall
houses that overlooked it, and the huddle of booths about it, contributed
a share of the illumination. At an hour late even for Paris, an hour
when honest men should have been sunk in slumber, this strange brilliance
did for a moment perplex him; but the past week had been so full of
fetes, of masques and frolics, often devised on the moment and dependent
on the King's whim, that he set this also down to such a cause, and
wondered no more.

The lights in the houses did not serve the purpose he had in his mind,
but beside the closed gate of the cemetery, and between two stalls, was a
votive lamp burning before an image of the Mother and Child. He crossed
to this, and assuring himself by a glance to right and left that he stood
in no danger from prowlers, he drew a