m.

The fact weighed something in the balance of probabilities: and in
growing excitement, Claude hurried on, sought the cookshop at which he
had broken his fast--a humble place, licensed for the scholars--and ate
his supper, not knowing what he ate, nor with whom he ate it. It was
only by chance that his ear caught, at a certain moment, a new tone in
the goodwife's voice; and that he looked up, and saw her greet her
husband.

"Ay!" the man said, putting off his bandoleer, and answering the
exclamation of surprise which his entrance had evoked. "It's bed for me
to-night. It's so cold they will send but half the rounds."

"Whose order is that?" asked a scholar at Claude's table.

"Messer Blondel's."

"Shows his sense!" the goodwife cried roundly. "A good man, and knows
when to watch and when to ha' done!"

Claude said nothing, but he rose with burning cheeks, paid his share--it
was seven o'clock--and, passing out, made his way back. It should be
said that in addition to the Tertasse Gate, two lesser gates, the
Treille on the one hand and the Monnaye on the other, led from the town
proper to the Corraterie; and this time he chose to go out by the
Treille. Having ascertained that the guard-room there also was almost
denuded of men, he passed along the Corraterie to his bastion, hugging
the houses on his right, and giving the wall a wide berth. Although the
cold wind blew in his face he paused several times to listen, nor did he
enter his bastion until he had patiently made certain that it was
untenanted.

The night was very dark: it was the night of December the 12th, old
style, the longest and deadest of the year. Far below him in the black
abyss on which the wall looked down, a few oil lamps marked the island
and the town beyond the Rhone. Behind him, on his left, a glimmer
escaping here and there from the upper windows marked the line of the
Corraterie, of which the width is greatest at the end farthest from the
river. Near the far extremity of the rampart a bright light marked the
Porte Neuve, distant about two hundred yards from his post, and about
seventy or eighty from the Porte Tertasse, the inner gate which
corresponded with it. Straight from him to the Porte Neuve ran the
rampart a few feet high on the inner side, some thirty feet high on the
outer, but shrouded for the present in a black gloom that defied his
keenest vision.

He waited more than an hour, his ears on the alert. At the end of that
time,