disappointed, and paused to reflect.

"Their trouble is evident," he murmured to himself. "He may still be
here. The reward for his capture is too great to be given up lightly;
and, besides, I hate the fellow for the love she bears him--I will leave
no stone unturned."

"Dame Perrotte!" he said returning to the old woman, and speaking to her
in a low tone of voice--"A criminal of state has escaped from the king's
justice. In spite of the protestations of your grandchildren, I cannot
doubt that he is concealed hereabouts; and you must know where. You
will not fail, I am sure, to indicate the place of his retreat, when you
know that, as the friend of those who have proved the bitterest enemies
of your religion, he must also be your deadly enemy."

"And is it Landry, the recreant, the apostate, the only seceder of our
family from the just cause, who speaks thus?" said the old woman lifting
her head with a haggard expression.

"The necessary policy of the times," whispered the captain, sitting down
on the stool by her side, and approaching himself confidentially nearer,
"has compelled me, like many others, to be that in seeming which we are
not in heart. Has not our chief, Henry of Navarre, yielded also to the
pressure of the circumstances in which he lives? Judge me not so
harshly, good aunt. But this criminal--he is one of those who have
hunted and destroyed, who have cried--'Down with them; down with the
Huguenots--pursue and kill;' and you would withdraw him from the
punishment he merits?"

"He! he! Was it, so?" muttered Perrotte, with eyes staring at the
vacancy before her.

"Do you not fear to pass for the accomplice of his crimes?" continued
Captain Landry in her ear. "Know you not that he has attainted the life
of your nursling by deeds of sorcery, and that Charles IX., our king,
now lies upon his death-bed."

"Who speaks of Charles?" exclaimed the old woman with increasing
wildness and excitement. "Charles and death! Yes, they go hand in hand!"

"Landry! You shall not torture our poor mother thus," cried Jocelyne
springing towards them, in order to interrupt a conversation which she
had been witnessing in agony, although she could not hear it, and the
effect of which upon her grandmother's unsettled mind became every
moment more visible.

"Fair cousin, with your leave!" replied the captain. "I am bound to do
the duties of my office. I shall be grieved to use constraint." And,
waving his hand to her to