e silence with a vengeance,
when--

"You are--too late!" Louis muttered. "Too late!" he repeated with
protruded lips.

Blondel glared at him as if he would annihilate him. Too late? What did
this creature know? Or how could it be too late, if Basterga had not
returned? Yet the Syndic was shaken. His fingers no longer tingled for
the other's cheek; he no longer panted to break the silence in a way
that should startle him. On the contrary, he listened; while his eyes
passed swiftly round the room, to gather what was amiss. But all seemed
in order. The lads' bowls and spoons stood on the table, the great roll
of brown bread lay beside them, and a book, probably Claude's, lay face
downwards on the board. The door of one of the bedrooms stood open. The
Syndic's suspicious gaze halted at the closed door. He pointed to it.

Louis shook his head; then, seeing that this was not enough, "There is
no one there," he whispered. "But I cannot tell you here. I will follow
you, honoured sir, to----"

"The Porte Tertasse."

"Mercier would meet us, by your leave," Louis rejoined with a faint
grin.

The magistrate glared at the tool who on a sudden was turned adviser.
Still, for the time he must humour him. "The mills, then, on the
bridge," he muttered. And he opened the door with care and went out.
With a dreadful sense of coming evil he went along the Corraterie and
took his way down the steep to the bridge which, far below, curbed the
blue rushing waters of the Rhone. The roar of the icy torrent and of the
busy mills, stupendous as it was, was not loud enough to deaden the two
words that clung to his ears, "Too late! Too late!" Nor did the frosty
sunshine, gloriously reflected from the line of snowy peaks to eastward,
avail to pierce the gloom in which he walked. For Louis Gentilis, if it
should turn out that he had inflicted this penance for naught, there was
preparing an evil hour.

The magistrate turned aside on a part of the bridge between two mills.
With his back to the wind-swept lake and its wide expanse of ruffled
waves, he stood a little apart from the current of crossers, on a space
kept clear of loiterers by the keen breeze. He seemed, if any curious
eye fell on him, to be engaged in watching the swirling torrent pour
from the narrow channel beneath him, as in warmer weather many a one
stood to watch it. Here two minutes later Louis found him; and if
Blondel still cherished hope, if he still fought against fear, or