perfectly. Neither parent met his glance; the mother troubled and
the father dogged, while the boy rejoiced sternly in some occult
triumph. He inflated his scant chest in pomp and hurled at the
defeated pair the well-known words:

"I wish she was _my_ daughter--about five minutes!"

New sounds from without--men's voices in greeting, and a ripple of
response from Cora somewhat lacking in enthusiasm--afforded Mr.
Madison unmistakable relief, and an errand upon which to send his
deadly offspring.

Hedrick, after a reconnaissance in the hall, obeyed at leisure.
Closing the library door nonchalantly behind him, he found himself
at the foot of a flight of unillumined back stairs, where his
manner underwent a swift alteration, for here was an adventure to
be gone about with ceremony. "Ventre St. Gris!" he muttered
hoarsely, and loosened the long rapier in the shabby sheath at his
side. For, with the closing of the door, he had become a Huguenot
gentleman, over forty and a little grizzled perhaps, but modest
and unassuming; wiry, alert, lightning-quick, with a wrist of
steel and a heart of gold; and he was about to ascend the stairs
of an unknown house at Blois in total darkness. He went up,
crouching, ready for anything, without a footfall, not even
causing a hideous creak; and gained the top in safety. Here he
turned into an obscure passage, and at the end of it beheld,
through an open door, a little room in which a dark-eyed lady sat
writing in a book by the light of an oil lamp.

The wary Huguenot remained in the shadow and observed her.

Laura was writing in an old ledger she had found in the attic,
blank and unused. She had rebound it herself in heavy gray
leather; and fitted it with a tiny padlock and key. She wore the
key under her dress upon a very thin silver chain round her neck.
Upon the first page of the book was written a date, now more than
a year past, the month was June--and beneath it:

"Love came to me to-day."

Nothing more was written upon that page.

CHAPTER FOUR

Laura, at this writing, looked piquantly unfamiliar to her
brother: her eyes were moist and bright; her cheeks were flushed
and as she bent low, intently close to the book, a loosened wavy
strand of her dark hair almost touched the page. Hedrick had never
before seen her wearing an expression so "becoming" as the eager
and tremulous warmth of this; though sometimes, at the piano, she
would play in a reverie which wrought suc