cher, his carriage immediately altered;
his step became cautious and, like the other whom he had not noticed, he
skulked in a doorway. He might have been thought a visitor there, but,
at the next moment, his red whiskers reappeared between the turned-up
collar of his mantle as he showed his head under the cornice of oak.

For what motive had the officer and nobleman stooped to skulking and
prying. One alone would amply exonerate the son of Mars--devotion to
Venus. And the architectural student, not fearing to pass the soldier in
his excusable ambush for a sweetheart, since his route over the bridge
into the new city, and not wishful to spoil the lover's sport, since he
was of the age to sympathize, prepared to leave his nook.

But it was fated that continual impediments were to be thrown in his
path on this eventful night. He had hardly taken two steps out of his
covert, which kept him hidden from the officer but revealed him to any
one approaching in the street, before a third individual of singular
mien caught his view and transfixed him with a thrill so sharp, poignant
and profound that a stroke of lightning would not have more dreadfully
affected him.

And yet, it was a woman--young by her step, light and quick as the
antelope's, graceful by her movements, charming by her outlines which a
poor, thin woolen wrapper imperfectly shrouded. She enchanted by the
mere contour; it was her weird burden which appalled the watcher. In one
hand, suspended horizontally, lengthwise parallel to her course, she
held what seemed by shape and somber hue to be an infant's coffin.

Her dark and brilliant eyes had descried him from the distance, but, in
an instant recognizing that he was neither one of the usual nocturnal
denizens nor another sort of whom she need entertain dread, she came on
apace.

Indeed, he was far from resembling the vagrants. He was clad without any
attention to the toilette, after the manner of the German student, who
likes to affront the Pharisee but without overmuch eccentricity. Under
the voluminous cloak, warranted by the chilly wind, a tight-fitting
tunic of dark green cloth, caught in by a broad buff leather belt with
the clasp of a University, admirably defined the shapeliness of a slight
but manly form. His hair, black as the raven's wing, was worn long and
came curling down on his shoulders; his complexion was dark but clear.
But the whole appearance was of a marvel in physical excellencies; a
physi