the box and tapped it gently. "There is, I believe, a vacancy in the
regiment, a Captaincy. My gracious King, whom God and the saints
preserve, leaves the appointment to me. It is at your service. I
regret that I can offer you no higher rank. I shall be glad to have
you in my command," he went on. "It is meet and right that you should
be there. I and my house have been well served for generations by your
house."

"I regret that I cannot accept your offer."

"Why not?" asked the Marquis haughtily. "It is not to every wandering
officer that I would have made it."

"I should have to swear allegiance to your King, monsieur, and that
I----"

"Enough," said the Marquis imperiously. "The offer is withdrawn. You
may go, sir."

"I have a duty to discharge before I avail myself of your courteous
permission," said the young man firmly.

"My uncle," said the girl, "you cannot dismiss Monsieur Jean Marteau in
that cavalier fashion. It is due to him that I am here."

"No, curse me, Marquis," burst out Sir Gervaise, wagging his big head
at the tall, French noble, "you don't know how much you owe to that
young man. Why, even I would not have been here but for him."

"I am deeply sensible to the obligations under which he has laid me,
both through the Comtesse Laure, and through you, old friend. I have
just endeavored to discharge them. If there be any other way----
Monsieur is recently from prison--perhaps the state of his finances--if
he would permit me----" continued the Marquis, who was not without
generous impulses, it seemed.

"Sir," interrupted Marteau, "I thank you, but I came here to confer,
not to receive, benefits."

"To confer, monsieur?"

"We Marteaux have been accustomed to render service, as the Marquis
will recollect," he said proudly.

He drew forth a soiled, worn packet of papers. Because they had
represented nothing of value to his captors they had not been taken.
They had never left his person except during his long period of
illness, when they had been preserved by a faithful official of the
hospital and returned to him afterward.

"Allow me to return these to the Marquis," he said, tendering them.

"And what are these?" asked the old man.

"The title deeds to the Aumenier estates, monsieur."

"The grant is waste paper," said the Marquis contemptuously.

"Not so," was the quick answer. "I have learned that the acts of the
late--of--those which were duly and properly registered