ed to the dusk and they could see their faces. It was
evident that Muller was not anywhere in the building, or he would have
come at the sound of the machine.

John glanced toward a window set deep in a heavy timbered wall and
admitting enough light to disclose a lantern and a box of matches on a
shelf. Still in his shrouding coat, cap and glasses he stepped forward,
struck a match and lighted the lantern. Driven by a sudden impulse, he
swept off the cap and glasses and held up the light.

He saw Julie's face turn deadly pale. Every particle of color was gone
from it and her blue eyes stared at him as if he were one newly risen
from the dead. Then the color flushed back in a rosy tide and such a
tide of gladness as he had never seen before in human eyes came into
hers.

"You! You! Is it really you?" she cried.

John was once more the knightly young crusader. No such moment had ever
before come into his life. His heart was full. Triumph and joy were
mingled there, and something over and beyond either. In that passing
flash he had read the light in her eyes, a light that he knew was only
for him, but in the instant of supreme revelation he would take no
advantage. The manner as well as the spirit of the young crusader was
upon him.

He knelt before her and taking one of her gloved hands in his kissed it.

"Yes, dearest Julie," he said, "by some singular fortune or chance, or
rather, I should call it, the will of God, I was chosen to bring you
here, and I glory because I have fulfilled the trust."

[Illustration: "'You! You! Is it really you?' she cried"]

Suzanne, tall and dark, stood looking down at them. Her grim features
which relaxed so rarely relaxed now and her eyes were soft. The young
stranger from beyond the seas had proved after all that he was a man
among men, and no Frenchwoman could resist a romance so strong and true
in the face of all that war could do.

John felt Julie's hand trembling in his, but she did not draw it away.
Her lashes were lowered a little now, but her gaze still rested upon
him, soft yet confident and powerful. He had believed in her courage. He
had believed that she would suffer no shock when she should see that he
was the strange man who had been at the wheel, and his confidence was
justified.

"And it was you who brought us up the mountain?" she said.

"The Prince of Auersperg himself chose me because I was a stranger and
he did not wish anyone else in the castle to know wh