with sweat and blood."

There for a time it was a question--possibly a question in the mind of
the duke himself--just how many minutes the smith still had to live.
Many a valet had been executed for less. During a period of about thirty
seconds the duke's face went black. Then the blackness dispersed. He
slowly smiled.

After all, he wasn't to be cheated of his experiment.

But he answered the question that was in his own mind and the minds of
all the others there as he looked at the smith and said:

"Fool, you'll be sufficiently punished--by your own device."

He let his eyes drift again to the Princess Gabrielle.

"And thou," he said, "art sufficiently punished already."

III.

It happened to be a day of late spring; and as Gaspard and this
strangely wedded bride of his and her parents came out of the castle,
both fed and forgiven, it must have seemed to all of them that this was
the most auspicious moment of their lives. The old folks, who had
partaken freely of the generous wines pressed upon them, had now passed
from their trembling terror to a spirit of frolic. Arm in arm, their
sabots clogging, they did a rigadoon down the winding road. It was a
spirit of tender elation, though, that dominated Gaspard and Susette.
They were like two beings distilled complete from the mild and fragrant
air, the sweet mistiness of the verdant valley, the purpling solemnity
of the Juras.

"What did he mean, his highness?" asked Susette as she pressed the
smith's arm closer to her side. "What did he mean that you'd be punished
by your own device?"

Gaspard looked down at her, pressed her manacled wrist to his lips, took
thought.

"I don't know," he answered gently. "He must be crazy. It's like calling
it punishment when a true believer receives the reward of paradise."

"You love me so much as that?"

"_Pardi!_" he ejaculated. "And thou?"

"So much," she palpitated, "so much that when you looked at the princess
like that--I wished you were blind!"

At the bottom of the hill, the old folks, Burgundians to the souls of
them, happily bade the young couple to be off about their own affairs.
They knew how it was with young married people. The old were
obstacles--so they themselves well recalled--albeit that was more than
twenty years ago.

Said Gaspard fondly: "This business has put me back in my work; but
we'll call this a holiday. Shall we go to my cottage or into the forest?
I know of a secret place--"

"Into t