sac.'

'You have not told me yet to whom she gave it,' I said sternly.

'She gave it,' he muttered, 'to a priest.'

'To what priest?'

'I do not know his name. He is a Jacobin.'

'And why?' I asked, gazing incredulously at the student. 'Why did
she give it to him? Come, come! have a care. Let me have none of your
Sorbonne inventions!'

He hesitated a moment, looking at me timidly, and then seemed to make up
his mind to tell me. 'He found out--it was when we lived in Paris, you
understand, last June--that she was a Huguenot. It was about the time
they burned the Foucards, and he frightened her with that, and made her
pay him money, a little at first, and then more and more, to keep her
secret. When the king came to Blois she followed his Majesty, thinking
to be safer here; but the priest came too, and got more money, and more,
until he left her--this.'

'This!' I said. And I set my teeth together.

Simon Fleix nodded.

I looked round the wretched garret to which my mother had been reduced,
and pictured the days and hours of fear and suspense through which she
had lived; through which she must have lived, with that caitiff's threat
hanging over her grey head! I thought of her birth and her humiliation;
of her frail form and patient, undying love for me; and solemnly, and
before heaven, I swore that night to punish the man. My anger was too
great for words, and for tears I was too old. I asked Simon Fleix no
more questions, save when the priest might be looked for again--which
he could not tell me--and whether he would know him again--to which he
answered, 'Yes.' But, wrapping myself in my cloak, I lay down by the
fire and pondered long and sadly.

So, while I had been pinching there, my mother had been starving here.
She had deceived me, and I her. The lamp flickered, throwing uncertain
shadows as the draught tossed the strange window-curtain to and fro.
The leakage from the roof fell drop by drop, and now and again the wind
shook the crazy building, as though it would lift it up bodily and carry
it away.

CHAPTER VIII. AN EMPTY ROOM.

Desiring to start as early as possible, that we might reach Rosny on the
second evening, I roused Simon Fleix before it was light, and learning
from him where the horses were stabled, went out to attend to them;
preferring to do this myself, that I might have an opportunity of
seeking out a tailor, and providing myself with clothes better suited to
my rank than those to