In Kings' Byways

"Good!" the Captain answered, in the same cautious tone. "But you——"

"I am believed to be elsewhere, and must be gone. I have far to ride to night. Farewell."

"Till we meet again," the Captain answered; and without more he saw his ally glide away and disappear in the darkness. A cautious word set the troop in motion, and a very few minutes saw them standing on the edge of the moat, the outline of the gateway tower looming above them, a shade darker than the wrack of clouds which overhead raced silently across the sky. A moment of suspense while one and another shivered—for there is that in a night attack which touches the nerves of the stoutest—and the planks were found, and as quietly as possible laid across the moat. This was so skilfully done that it evoked no challenge and the Captain crossing quickly with a few picked men, stood in the twinkling of an eye under the shadow of the gateway. Still no sound was heard save the hurried breathing of those at his elbow, the stealthy tread of others crossing, the persistent voices of the frogs in the water beneath. Cautiously he knocked three times and waited. The third rap had scarcely sounded before the gate rolled silently open, and he sprang in, followed by his men.

So far so good. A glance at the empty street and the porter's pale face told him at once that the Vicomte had kept his word. But he was too old a soldier to take anything for granted, and forming up his men as quickly as they entered, he allowed no one to advance until all were inside, and then, his trumpet sounding a wild note of defiance, two-thirds of his force sprang forward in a compact body while the other third remained to hold the gate. In a moment the town awoke to find itself in the hands of the enemy.

As the Vicomte had promised, there was no resistance. In the small keep a score of men did indeed run to arms, but only to lay their weapons down without striking a blow when they became aware of the force opposed to them. Their leader, sullenly acquiescing, gave up his sword and the keys of the town to the victorious Captain; who, as he sat his horse in the middle of the marketplace, giving his orders and sending off riders with the news, already saw himself in fancy Governor of Angoulême and Knight of the Holy Ghost.

As the red light of the torches fell on steel caps and polished hauberks, on the serried ranks of pikemen, and the circle of whitefaced townsfolks, the picturesque old square looked doubly picturesque and he who sat in the midst, its master, doubly a hero. Every five minutes, with a clatter of iron on the rough pavement and a shower of sparks, a horseman sprang away to tell the news at Montauban or Cahors; and every time that this occurred, the Captain, astride on his charger, felt a new sense of power and triumph.

Suddenly the low murmur of voices about him was broken by a new sound, the distant beat of hoofs, not departing but arriving, and coming each moment nearer. It was but the tramp of a single horse, but there was something in the sound which made the Captain prick his ears, and secured for the arriving messenger a speedy passage through the crowd. Even at the last the man did not spare his horse, but spurred through the ranks to the Captain's very side, and then and then only sprang to the ground. His face was pale, his eyes were bloodshot. His right arm was bound up in bloodstained cloths. With an oath of amazement, the Captain recognized the officer whom he had left in charge of Créance, and he thundered, "What is this? What is it?"

"They have got Créance!" the man gasped, reeling as he spoke. "They have got—Créance!"

"Who?" the Captain shrieked, his face purple with rage.

"The little man of Béarn! The King of Navarre! He assaulted it five hundred strong an hour after you left, and had the gate down before we could fire a dozen shots. We did what we could, but we were but one to seven. I swear, Captain, that we did all we could. Look at this!"

Almost black in the face, the Captain swore another oath. It was not only that he saw governorship and honours vanish like Will-o'-the-wisps, but that he saw even more quickly that he had made himself the laughing-stock of a kingdom! And that was the truth. To this day, among the stories which the southern French love to tell of the prowess and astuteness of their great Henry, there is no tradition more frequently told, none more frequently made the subject of mirth, than that of the famous exchange of Créance for Lusigny; of the move by which between dawn and sunrise, without warning, without a word, he gave his opponents mate.

THE HOUSE ON THE WALL

Whereat Huymonde was not too greatly or too fearfully moved. A warm town, of fat burghers and narrow streets, and oak wainscots that winked in the firelight, and burnished flagons that caught the drinker's smile, it was not to be lightly excited; and it had been besieged, heaven only knows how many times before. Men made ready as for a long frost, took count of wine and provisions, and hiding a portion of each under the cellar floor, thanked God that they were not the garrison, and that times were changed since the Thirty Years' War. These things done and the siege formed, they folded their hands and let themselves slide into the current of an idle life, flecked from time to time with bubbles of excitement. When the Austrian guns rumbled without, and the smoke eddied slowly over the walls, they stood in the streets, their hands in their muffs, and gossiped not unpleasantly; when the cannon were silent they smoked their long pipes on the ramparts, and measured the advance of the trenches, and listened while the oldest inhabitant prosed of the sack by Spinola in '24 and the winter siege of '41.

Whether the good townsfolk were as brave in private—when at home with their wives, for instance—may be doubted; but this for certain, the Burgomaster's trouble lay all with the women. Whether they had less faith in the great Louis, Fourteenth of the name, King of France—who, indeed, seemed in these days less superior to a world in arms than in the dawn of his glory—or they found the oldest inhabitant's tales too precisely to the point, they had a way of growing restive once a week, besieged the good Burgomaster's house, and demanded—with a thousand shrill and voluble tongues—immediate surrender on terms. Between whiles, being busy with scrubbing and baking, and washing their children, they were quiet enough. But as surely as Sunday came round, and with it a clean house and leisure to chat with the neighbours, the Burgomaster's hour came too, and with it the mob of women shaking crooked fingers at him, and bursting his ears with their shrill abuse. He was a bold man, but he began to dream at night of De Witt and his fate—of which he knew, with many gruesome particulars; and, from a stout and pompous burgher, he dwindled in six weeks to a lean and morose old tyrant. Withal he had no choice, for at his shoulder lurked the French Commandant, a resolute man with a wit of his own and a pet curtain—between the Stadthaus bastion and the bastion of the Bronze Horse, and very handy to the former—whereat he shot deserters and the like on the smallest pretext.

Still, the Burgomaster, as he wiped his sallow face, and watched the last of the women withdraw on the seventh Sunday of the Siege, began to think that, rather than pass through this again, he would face even the curtain and a volley; if he were sure that one volley would do it, and no botching. The ordeal had been more severe than usual: his cheek still twitched, and he leaned against his official table to belie his trembling knees. He had been settling a change of billets, when the viragos broke in on him, and only his clerk had been present; for his council—and this he felt sorely—much bullied in old days, were treating him to solitude and the monopoly of the burden. His clerk was with him now; but affected to be busy with the papers on the table. Perhaps he was scared too, and equally bent on hiding it; at any rate, it was the Burgomaster who first discovered that they were not alone, but that one woman still lingered. She had placed herself in a corner of the oak seat that ran round the panelled room; and the stained glass of the windows, blazoned with the arms of Huymonde and the Counts of Flanders, cast a veil of tawny lights between her and the gazer; behind which she seemed to lurk. The Burgomaster started, then remembered that the danger was over for the time—he was not afraid of one woman; and in a harsh voice he bade her follow her mates.

"Begone, wench!" he said. "And go to your prayers! That is women's work. Leave these things to men."

The woman rose to her full height. "When men," she answered, in a voice at which the Burgomaster started afresh, "hide themselves, it is time women stood forward. Where is your son?"

The Burgomaster swore.

"Where is your son?" the woman repeated firmly.

The Burgomaster swore again, his sallow face grown purple: then he looked at his clerk and signed to him to go. The clerk went, wondering and gaping—for this was unusual—and the two were left together.

At that the Burgomaster found his voice. "You Jezebel!" he cried, approaching the woman. "How dare you come here to make mischief? How dare you lay your tongue to my son's name? Do you know, shameless one, that if I were to give the word——"

But at that word the woman caught fire, blazed up, and outdid him in rage. She was a middle-aged woman and spare, with a face naturally pale and refined, and an air of pride that peeped even through the neat poverty of her dress. But at that word she shook her hands in his face and her eyes blazed.

"Shameless?" she retorted. "No, but shameful; and through whom? Through your son, your villain, your craven of a son who hides now! Through your base-born tradesman of a son who dare face neither woman nor man."

"Silence!" the Burgomaster cried. "Silence!"

She broke off, but only to throw her whole soul into one breathless cry.

"Will he marry her?" she panted; and she held out her hands to him, palm uppermost. "Will he marry her? In a word."

"No," the Burgomaster answered grimly.

She flung up her arms.

"Then beware!" she cried wildly, and for the first time she raised her voice to the pitch of those other shrews. "Beware! You and yours have brought us to shame; but the end is not yet, the end is not yet! You do not know us."

At that he rallied himself. "I may not know you yet," he said hardily, and indeed brutally; "but I know this, that such things as these come, woman, of people setting themselves up to be better than their neighbours, when they are as poor as church mice. They come of slighting honest fellows and setting caps at those above you. Your daughter—or you, woman, if you like it better—set the trap, and you are caught in it yourselves. That is all."

"You wretch!" she gasped. "And he—will not marry her?"

"Not while I live," he answered firmly.

"And that is your last word?"

"It is," he said. "My very last."

He was on his guard, prepared to defend himself even against actual violence. For he knew what angry women were and of what they were capable even against a Burgomaster. But after a tense pause of suspense, during every moment of which he expected her to fall upon him, she said only, "Where is he?"

"I shall not tell you," he answered. "Nor would it help you if you knew!"

"And that is all?"

"That is all."

It was not their first interview. She had pled with him before, and knelt and wept and abased herself before him. She had done all that the love that tore her heartstrings—the love that made it so much more difficult to see her child suffer than to suffer herself, the love that every moment painted the bare room at home, and her daughter prostrate there in shame and despair—she had done all that even love could suggest. There was no room therefore for farther pleading, for farther prayers; she had threatened, and she had failed. What, then, remained to be done?

Nothing, the Burgomaster thought, as in a flash of triumph and relief he watched her go, outfaced and defeated. Nothing; and he hugged himself on the prudence that had despatched his son out of the way in time, and rendered a match with that proud pauper brat impossible. Nothing; but to the woman, as she went, it seemed that everything remained to be done. As she left the little square with its tall slender gabled houses and plunged into the narrow street that led to her house on the wall, the story of her life in Huymonde spread itself before her in a string of scenes that now—now alas! but never before—seemed to find their natural sequence in this tragedy. Nine years before she had come to Huymonde with her artist husband; but the great art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was already dying or dead in Flanders, and with it the artistic sense, and the honour once paid to it. Huymonde made delft still, and pottery, but on old conventional lines, in an endless repetition of old formal patterns, with no touch of genius or appreciation. Trade, and a desire to win the florid ease, the sleek comfort of the burgher, possessed the town wholly. The artist had found himself a stranger in a strange land; had struggled on, despising and despised, in the quaint house on the wall, at which he had snatched on his first coming because it looked over the open country. There, after seven years, he had slipped out of life, scarcely better known, and no whit more highly appreciated than on the day of his arrival.

After that the story was of two women living sola cum solâ—one wholly for the other—suspected, if not disliked, by their neighbours, and for their part alien in all their thoughts and standards; since the artist's widow could not forget that he had been the favourite pupil of Peter Paul's old age, or that her father had counted quarterings. Sola cum solâ, until one day the war began, and Huymonde set about looking to its defences. Then a young man appeared on a certain evening to inspect the House on the Wall, and see that the window, which looked out upon the level country side, was safely and properly built up and strengthened.

"You must have a sergeant and guard billeted here!" was his first sharp word; and the widow had sighed at this invasion of their privacy, which was also their poverty. But the young girl, standing sideways in that very window, which was to be closed, had pouted her red lips and frowned on the intruder, and the sergeant had not come, nor the guard. Instead the young man had returned, at first weekly, then at shorter intervals, to see that the window defences remained intact; and with his appearance life in the House on the Wall had become a different thing. He was the son of the Burgomaster of the town, he would be the richest man in the town, his wife might repay with interest and advantage the dull bovine scorn to which the city dames had treated her mother. The widow permitted herself to hope. Her child was beautiful, with the creamy fairness of Gueldres, and as pure as the sky. The young man was gay and handsome; qualities which made their due impression on the elder woman's heart, long unfamiliar with them. So, for more than a year he had had the run of the house, he had been one of the family; and then one day he had disappeared, and then one other day——

Oh, God of vengeance! She paused in the darkening street, as she thought of it. Beside her a long window, warmly curtained, sent out a stream of ruddy light. From the opposite house issued cheery voices and tinkling laughter, and the steam of cooking. And before and behind, whichever way she looked, firelight flashed through diamond panes and glowed in the heart of green bottle-glass. Out in the street men shouldered past her, talking blithely; and in distant kitchens cups clinked and ware clattered, and every house—every house from garret to parlour, seemed to her a home happy and gleeful. A home; and her home! She stood at the thought and cursed them; cursed them, and like the echo of her whispered words the solemn boom of a cannon floated over the town.

A chance passer, seeing her stand thus, caught the whiteness of her face, and thought her afraid. "Cheer up, mother!" he said over his shoulder, "they are all bark and little bite!"

"I would they bit to the bone!" she cried in fury.

But luckily he was gone too far to hear or to understand; and, resuming her course, she hurried on, her head bowed. A few minutes' walking brought her to the foot of the stone steps that, in two parallel flights, led up to the low-browed door of her house. There, as she set her foot on the lowest stair, and wearily began the ascent, a man advanced out of the darkness and touched her sleeve. For an instant she thought it the man, and she caught her breath and stepped back. But his first word showed her her mistake.

"You live here?" he said abruptly. "Can I come in?"

In ordinary times his foreign accent and the glint of a pistol-barrel, which caught her eye as he spoke, would have set her on her guard. But to-night she had nothing to lose—nothing, it seemed to her, to hope. She scarcely looked at the man. "As you please," she said dully. "What do you want?"

"To speak to you."

"Come in then," she said.

She did not turn to him again until they stood together in the room above, and the door was shut. Then she asked him a second time what he wanted.

"Are we alone?" he returned, staring suspiciously about him.

"My daughter is above," she answered. "There is no one else in the house."

"And you are poor?"

She shrugged her shoulders indifferently, and by a movement of her hands seemed to put the room in evidence; one or two pictures, standing on easels, and a few common painter's properties redeemed it from utter bareness, utter misery, yet left it cold and faded.

Nevertheless, his next question took her by surprise. "What rent do you pay?" he asked harshly.

"What rent?" she repeated, shaken out of her moodiness.

"Yes. How many crowns?"

"Twenty," she answered mechanically. What was his aim? What did he want?

"A year?"

"Yes, a year."

The man had a round shaven whitish face that sat in the circle of a tightly tied Steinkirk cravat, like an ivory ball in a cup; and short hair, that might on occasion line a periwig. Notwithstanding his pistol, he had rather the air of a tradesman than a soldier until you met his eyes, which flashed with a keen glitter that belied his smug face and shaven cheeks. Those eyes caught the widow's eyes as he answered her, and held them.

"Twenty crowns a year," he said. "Then listen. I will give you two hundred crowns for this house—for one night."

"For this house for one night?" she repeated, thinking she had not heard aright.

"For this house, for one night!" he answered.

Then she understood. She was quick-witted, she had lived long in the house and knew it. Without more she knew that God or the devil had put that which she sought into her hands; and her first impulse was to pure joy. The thirst for vengeance welled up, hot and resistless. Now she could be avenged on all; on the hard-hearted tyrant who had rejected her prayer, on the sleek dames who would point the finger at her child, on the smug town that had looked askance at her all these years—that had set her beyond the pale of its dull grovelling pleasures, and shut her up in that lonely House on the Wall! Now—now she had it in her hand to take tenfold for one. Her face so shone at the thought that the man watching her felt a touch of misgiving; though he was of the boldest or he had not been there on that errand.

"When?" she said. "When?"

"To-morrow night," he answered. And then, leaning forward, and speaking lightly but in a low voice, he went on, "It is a simple matter. All you have to do is to find a lodging and begone from here by sunset, leaving the door on the latch. No more; for the money it shall be paid to you, half to-night and half the day after to-morrow."

"I want no money," she said.

"No money?" he exclaimed incredulously.

"No, no money," she answered, in a tone and with a look that silenced him.

"But you will do it?" he said, almost with timidity.

"I will do it," she answered. "At sunset to-morrow you will find the door on the latch and the house empty. After that see that you do your part!"

His eyes lightened. "Have no fear," he said grimly. "But mark one thing, mistress," he continued. "It is an odd thing to do for nothing."

"That is my business!" she cried, with a flash of rage.

He had been about to warn her that during the next twenty-four hours she would be watched, and that on the least sign of a message passing between her and those in authority the plot would be abandoned. But at that look he held his peace, said curtly that it was a bargain then; and in a twinkling he was gone, leaving her—leaving her alone with her secret.

Yet for a time it was not of that or of her vengeance that she thought. Her mind was busy with the years of solitude and estrangement she had passed in that house and that room; with the depression that little by little had sapped her husband's strength and hope, with the slow decay of their goods, their cheerfulness, even the artistic joys that had at first upheld them; with the aloofness that had doomed her and her child to a dreary existence; with this last great wrong.

"Yes, let it be! let it be!" she cried. In fancy she saw the town lie below her—as she had often seen it with the actual eye from the ramparts—she saw the clustering mass of warm red roofs and walls, the outlying towers, the church, the one long straight street; and with outstretched arm she doomed it—doomed it with a vengeful sense of the righteousness of the sentence.

Yet, strange to say, that which was uppermost in her mind and steeled her soul and justified the worst, was not the last thing of which she had to complain—her daughter's wrong—but the long years of loneliness, the hundred, nay, the thousand, petty slights of the past, bearable at the time and in detail, but intolerable in the retrospect now hope was gone. She dwelt on these, and the thought of what was coming filled her with a fearful joy. She thought of them, and took the lamp and passed into the next room, and, throwing the light on the rough face of brickwork that closed the great window, she eyed the cracks eagerly, and scarcely kept her fingers from beginning the work. For she understood the plot. One man working silently within, in darkness, could demolish the wall in an hour; then a whistle, rope ladders, a line of men ascending, and before midnight the house would vomit armed men, the nearest gate would be seized, the town would lie at the mercy of the enemy!

Presently she had to go to her daughter, but the current of her thoughts kept the same course. The girl was sullen, and lay with her face to the wall, and gave short answers, venting her misery after the common human fashion on the one who loved her best. The mother bore it, not as before with the patience that scorned even to upbraid, but grimly, setting down each peevish word to the score that was so soon to be paid. She lay all night beside her child, and in the small hours heard her weep and felt the bed shake with her unhappiness, and carried the score farther; nay, busied herself with it, so that day and the twittering of sparrows and the booming of the early guns took her by surprise. Took her by surprise, but worked no change in her thoughts.

She was so completely under the influence of the idea, that she felt no fear; the chance of discovery, and the certainty that if discovered she would be done to death without mercy, did not trouble her in the least. She went about her ordinary tasks until late in the afternoon; then, without preface or explanation, she told her daughter that she was going out to seek a lodging.

The girl was profoundly astonished. "A lodging?" she cried, sitting up. "For us?"

"Yes," the mother answered coldly. "For whom do you think?"

"And you will leave this house?"

"Yes."

"But when?"

"To-night."

"Leave this house—for a lodging—to-night?" the girl faltered. She could not believe her ears. "Why? What has happened?"

Then the woman, in the fierceness of her mood, turned her arms against her child. "Need you ask?" she cried bitterly. "Do you want to go on living in this house—in this house, which was your father's? To go in and out at this door, and meet our neighbours and talk with them on these steps? To wait here—here, where every one knows you, for the shame that will come? For the man who will never come?"

The girl sank back, shuddering and weeping. The woman covered her head and went out, and presently returned; and in the grey of the evening, which within the walls fell early, the two left the house, the elder carrying a bundle of clothes, the younger whimpering and wondering. Stupefied by the suddenness of the movement, and her mother's stern purpose, she did not observe that they had left the door on the latch, and the House on the Wall unguarded.

The people with whom they had found a lodging, a little room under the sharply sloping tiles, knew them by name and sight—that in so small a place was inevitable—but found nothing strange in the woman's reason for moving; she said that at home the firing broke her daughter's rest. The housewife indeed could sympathize with her, and did so. "I never go to bed myself," she said roundly, "but I dream of those wretches sacking the town, and look to awake with my throat cut."

"Tut—tut!" her husband answered angrily. "You will live to wag your tongue and make mischief a score of years yet. And for the town being sacked, there is small chance of that—in these days."

The elder of his new lodgers repeated his words. "Small chance of that?" she said mechanically. "Is that so?"

The man looked at her with patronage. "Little or none," he said. "If we have to cry Enough, we shall cry it in time, and on terms you may be sure; and they will march in like gentlemen, and an end of it."

"But if it happen at night?" the woman asked curiously. She felt a strange compulsion to put the question. "If they should take us by surprise? What then?"

The man shrugged his shoulders. "Well, then, of course, things might be different," he said. "But, sho! it won't happen. No fear!" he continued hastily, and in a tone that belied his words. "And you, wife, get back to your pots and leave this talking! You frighten yourself to death with imaginings!"

The woman from the House on the Wall went upstairs to her garret. She did not repent of what she had done; but a sense of its greatness began to take hold of her, and whether she would or not, she found herself waiting—waiting and watching for she alone knew what. Given a companion less preoccupied with misery and she must have been suspected. But the girl lay moodily on her bed, and the widow was at liberty to stand at the window with her hands spread on the sill, and look, and listen, and look, and listen, unwatched. She could not see the street, for below their dormer the roof ran down steeply a yard or more to the eaves; but she had full command of the opposite houses, and at one of the windows a young girl was dressing herself. The woman watched her plait her fair hair, looking sideways the while at a little mirror; and saw her put on a poor necklace and remove it again and try a piece of ribbon. Gradually the watcher became interested; from interest she passed to speculation, and wondered with a slight shudder how this girl would fare between that and morning. And then the girl looked up and met the woman's eyes with the innocence of her own—and the woman fell back from the window as if a hand had struck her.

She went no more after that to the window; but until it was quite dark she sat in a chair with her hands on her lap, forcing herself to quietude, as women will, where men would tramp the floor unceasingly. When it was quite dark she trimmed and lit the lamp, and still she did not repent. But she listened more and more closely, and with less concealment. And the face of the girl preening herself at her poor mirror returned again and again, and troubled her. She could contemplate the fate of the town as a whole, and say, let it be! Ay, in God's name let it be! But the one face seen at a window, the one case brought home to her, clung to her mind, and pricked and pained her—dully.

By-and-by she heard the clock strike ten, and her daughter, turning feverishly on the bed, asked her peevishly when she was going to lie down. "Presently," she answered, "presently." And still she sat and listened, and still the girl's face haunted her. She began to picture in detail the thing for which she was waiting. She fancied that she could hear the first alert, followed by single cries, these by a roar of alarm, this by the wild rush of feet; then she heard the crashing volley, the rattle of hoofs on the pavement, the whirl of the flight through the streets, the shouts of "Germany! Germany!" as the troops swept in triumphant! And then—ah, then!—she heard the things that would follow, the crashing in of doors, the sudden glare of flames, the screams of men driven to the wall, the yells of drunken Saxons, the shrieks of women, the——

No more! No more! She could not bear it. With a shudder she stood erect, and looked about her—wildly. The lamp burned low, her daughter was asleep. With a swift movement the mother caught up a shawl that lay beside the bed, and turned to the door.

Alas, too late. She had repented, but too late. With her hand on the latch, her foot on the threshold, she stood, arrested by a low distant cry that caught her ear, and swelled even as she listened to it, into a roar of many voices rousing the town. What was it? Alas, she knew; she knew, and cowered against the door whitefaced and shaking. A moment passed, and the alarm, after sinking, rose again, and now there was no doubt of its meaning. Shod feet pattered through the streets, windows clattered up noisily; a wild medley of voices broke out, and again in a few seconds was lost in the crashing sound of the very volley she had foreheard!

From that moment it seemed to her that hell was broken loose in the town; and she had loosed it! She could no longer, in the din that rose from the street, distinguish one sound from another; but the crash of distant cannon, the heavy tramp of feet near at hand, the screams and cries and shouting, the blare of trumpets, all rose in a confused babel of sounds that shook the very houses, and blanched the cheeks and drove the blood to the heart. The woman, cowering against the door, covered her ears, and groaned. Her horror at what she had done was so great, that she did not heed what was passing near her, nor give a thought to the child in the same room with her until the latter's voice struck her ear, and she turned and found her daughter standing in the middle of the floor, her hand to her breast, and her eyes wide. Then the mother awoke in her again; with pallid shaking lips she cried to her to lie down—to lie down, for there was no danger.

But the girl raised her hand for silence. "Hush!" she said. "I hear a step! It is his! It is his! And he is coming to me! Mother, he is coming to me!"

The mother imagined that terror had turned the girl's brain; it was inconceivable that in that roar of sound a single step could make itself heard, or be recognized. And she tried, in a voice that shook with horror and remorse, to repeat her meaningless words of comfort. But they died on her lips, died still-born, as the door flew open, and a man rushed in, gazed an instant, then caught her child in his arms.

It was the Burgomaster's son!

The woman from the House on the Wall leaned an instant against the door-post, gazing at them. Little by little as she looked the expression in her eyes changed, and they took the cold, fixed, distant look of a sleep-walker. A moment and she drew a shuddering breath, and turned and went out, and, groping in the outside darkness for the balustrade, went unfaltering into the street.

A part of the garrison happened to be retreating that way at the time. A few were still turning to fire at intervals; but the greater number were hurrying along with bent heads, keeping close to the houses, and intent only on escaping. Reaching the middle of the roadway she stood there like a rock, her face turned in the direction whence the fugitives were hastening.

Presently she saw that for which she waited. In the reek of smoke about the burning gate, towards which she looked—and the flames of which filled the street with a smoky glare—the glitter of steel shone out; and in a moment, rank on rank, a dense column of men appeared, marching shoulder to shoulder. She watched them come nearer and nearer, filling the street from wall to wall, until she could see the glare of their eyes; then with a cry which was lost in the tumult she rushed on the bayonets.

With eyes shut, with arms open to receive the thrust. But the man whom she had singled out—for one she had singled out—dropped his point with an oath, and dealt her a buffet with butt and elbow that flung her aside unhurt. A second did the same, and a third, until, bandied from one to another, she fell against the wall, breathless and dizzy, but unhurt.

The column swept on; and she rose. She had escaped—by a miracle, as it seemed to her. But despair still held her, and the roar of a mine exploding not far off, the stunning report of which was followed by heartrending wails, drove her again on her fate. She had not far to look, for hard on the foot followed a troop of dragoons. The horses, excited by the fire and the explosion, were plunging in every direction; and even as the crazed woman's eyes alighted on them one fell and threw its rider. It seemed to her that she saw her doom; and, darting from the wall, she flung herself before them.

What was one woman on such a night, in such an inferno? The torrent of iron, remorseless, unchecked, thundered over her and drove on along the street. It seemed impossible that she should have escaped. Yet when some came to look to the fallen soldier—whose neck was broken—the woman beside him rose unhurt and without a scratch, and staggered to the wall. There she leaned one moment to recover her breath and shake off her giddiness, and a second to think; then with a new expression on her face, an expression between hope and fear, she took her way weakly along the street. The first turning on the right, the second on the left brought her unmolested—for the enemy were quelling the last resistance in the Square—to the front of the House on the Wall. She looked up eagerly and saw that the windows were dark; looked at the door, and by the light of the distant fire saw that it was closed.

Still she scarcely dared to hope that the thing was true; that thing which her miraculous escape had suggested to a mind almost unhinged. It took her more than a minute to mount the steps and push the heavy door open, and satisfy herself that in the outer room at least all was as she had left it. A spark of fire still glowed on the hearth; she groped her way to it, and blew it into a flame; and with shaking hands she lit a spill of wood and waved it above her head, then held it.

Yes, here all was as she had left it. But in the farther room—the room? What would she find there? She stared at the door and dared not open it; then with a desperate hand tore it open, and stood on the threshold.

Yes, and here! Here, too, all was as she had left it. She waved the little brand above her head heedless of the sparks, waved it until it flamed high and cast a light into every corner. But the searcher's eyes sought only one thing, saw only one thing, and that was the mask of brickwork that blocked the great window.

It was untouched! It was untouched! She had hoped as much for the last five minutes; for everything, the closed door, the unchanged room had pointed to it. Yet now that she was assured of it, and knew for certain that she had not done the thing—that guilty as she had been in will, not one life lost that night lay at her door, not one outrage, she fell on her face and wept—wept, though it was the sweetest moment of her life, prayed though she sought nothing but to thank God—prayed and wept with childish cries of gratitude, until the light at her side went out and left her in darkness, and through a rift in the masonry a single star peered in at her.

In Huymonde there was wailing enough that night; ruin and loss, and a broadcasting of lifelong sentences of penury. One fell to the Burgomaster's lot; and had she still aught against him—but she had not—the score was paid. And many prayed, and a few, when morning came, and showed their roofs still standing, gave thanks. But to this woman prostrate through the hours on the floor of the forsaken House on the Wall, all that night was one long prayer and thanksgiving. For she had passed through the fire, the smell of the singeing was on her garments, and yet she was saved.

HUNT, THE OWLER

It was the King's habit to go on Saturdays in his coach to Richmond Park, returning to Kensington in the evening; and the scheme, laid bare, was to fall upon him in a narrow lane leading from the river to Turnham Green, where the miry nature of the ground rendered his progress slow. For complicity in this plot nine persons, differing much in rank, from Sir John Fenwick, who had been Colonel of King Charles's Life Guards, to Keyes, a private in the Blues, suffered on the scaffold; and for a time all England rang with it. The informers, Porter and Goodman, were viewed with an abhorrence hardly less than that which the plot itself excited in honest circles; and in this odium a man shared in some small degree, who, though he had not been a party to the plot, had stooped, under the stress of confinement and the fear of death, to give some evidence.

This was James Hunt, the Owler, or smuggler, a name forgotten now, famous then. For years his house, in a lonely situation in the dreariest part of Romney Marsh, had been the favourite house of call for Jacobites bound for St. Germains or returning thence. At regular intervals, if wind and tide served, a packet-boat ran between it and the French coast, and between whiles the hiding-places in his rambling old house, which had been originally contrived to hold runlets of Nantz and bales of Lyons, lodged men whose faces were known in the Mall and St. James's, and whose titles were not less real because for the nonce they wore them, with their stars, in their pockets. Naturally, in the general break-up consequent on the discovery of the Turnham Green plot, these practices came to light, the lonely house in the marshes was entered, and Hunt was himself seized and conveyed to London under a strong guard. There he lay in the Marshalsea until, by discovering the names of certain persons who had used his hiding-places, he was permitted to ransom his life.

When all was told he was of no further use to the Government. He was released, and one fine morning in September, '96, he walked out of his prison a morose and lonely man. Resolute and daring by nature, but accustomed to live in the open, with the sound of the lark in his ears, it was only in the solitude of his cell that he had fallen below himself. Now, under the open sky, he paid the penalty in a load of shame and remorse. His feet carried him to the Jacobite house of call in Maiden Lane, whither he had directed his nag to be sent; but on his arrival at the inn his eye told him that the place was changed. The ostler, who had been his slave, looked askance at him, the landlord, once his obedient servant, turned his back. He was no longer Mr. Hunt, of Romney, but Hunt the Approver, Hunt the Evidence. Flinging down a crown and a curse he rode desperately out of the yard, and made haste to leave London behind him.

But in the country it was little better. At inns on the Dover road, where he had swaggered in old days the hero of a transparent mystery, and only less admired than the famous Mr. Birkenhead, the Jacobite post, whom even the Tower failed to confine—at these his reception was now cold and formal; and presently the man's heart and hopes went forward and settled hungrily on the two things left to him in this changed world, his home in the marshes and his girl. His heart cried home! The slighting looks of men who would have succumbed to a tithe of his temptations, would not reach him there; there—he had a reason for believing it—he would still read love and welcome in his child's eyes.

He was so far from having a turn for sentiment that the gibbet at Dartford, though he had lain down and risen up for weeks under the shadow of the gallows, caused him no qualms as he passed under it; nor the man who hung in chains upon it. But when he rode up to the tavern at the last stage short of Romney and saw Trot Eubank, the Romney apothecary, loitering before the house, he drove an oath through his closed teeth.

The man of drugs was too distant to hear it; nevertheless he smiled, and not pleasantly. The apothecary had red cheeks and a black wig, and a splayed face that promised heartiness. His small fishy eyes, however, with a cast in them that was next door to a squint, belied the promise. He came up to Hunt's stirrup and gave him joy of his freedom very loudly. "And you will find all well at home," he continued. "All well and hearty."

Hunt thanked him coldly, watered his horse, and drank a cup of ale with the landlord; who looked at him pitifully, as at a man once admirable and now fallen. Then he climbed into his saddle again and started briskly. But he had not ridden a hundred paces before Eubank, on his old white mare, was at his side. "My way is your way," said he.

Hunt grunted, and wondered how long that had been so; for New Romney, where the apothecary lived, lay to the right. But he said nothing.

"They have quartered three soldiers on you," Eubank continued, squinting out of the corner of one eye to mark the effect of his words, "and an officer."

The smuggler checked his horse. "As if I had not done enough for them!" he cried bitterly.

"Umph!" said the apothecary, drily, and with meaning. "The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth! Eh, Mr. Hunt?"

He spoke below his breath, but Hunt caught the words and turned on him, his face blazing with rage. "You dirty tar-mixer!" he cried, flinging caution to the winds. "What do you mean? And how dare you ride out to meet me? If you have anything to say, say it, and begone."

"Softly, softly, Mr. Hunt," Eubank answered, his face a shade paler. "You know what I mean. There was a name wanting in your evidence—in your deposition. A name lacking, d'ye take me?"

"A name?"

"Ay, Mr. Fayle's. And Mr. Fayle is missing, too. But I don't think," the apothecary continued cunningly, his eyes gazing far apart, "that he is in France. I think that he is nearer Romney. And that is why they have quartered three soldiers on you."

"You villain!" Hunt cried, his voice shaking with passion. "This is your work." And he raised his heavy riding-whip, and made as if he would ride the other down. The two were alone on the marsh.

But quick as thought Eubank lugged a pistol from his holster and levelled it.

"Softly, Mr. Hunt," he said. "Softly! I warn you, if anything happens to me, it is known who is with me. Besides, I mean you no harm."

"And no good," said the smuggler, between his teeth. "What do you want?"

"What I have always wanted," the other answered. "Is there any harm in wanting a wife?" he added, a whine in his voice.

"Yes, when she does not want you," Hunt retorted.

"She will want me—when the other is out of the way," the apothecary answered sullenly.

"Out of the way?"

"Ay; in France, or—there!"—and the apothecary nodded towards the gibbet on Dymchurch Flat, which they were just approaching. "It is for her to choose," he added softly. "This side or that!"

"How?"

"If she takes me, Fayle may go hang, or cross the water, or as you please, so that he go far enough. But if she will have him——"

"Well?" Hunt said; for Eubank paused, squinting horribly.

"She will marry him there!" the apothecary answered, pointing to the gibbet.

"Ay?"

"I know that he is here," Eubank continued, his voice low, "and he cannot escape me. She has bubbled the soldiers; they do not know him. And for aught I know he goes out and in, and no one is the wiser. And the game may be played as long as you please. But from to-day I am there."

"You!" Hunt cried.

"To be sure," Eubank answered, letting his ill-concealed triumph appear. "At the farm. I am the officer. Ah, would you? Mr. Hunt, back! Back, or I fire."

The smuggler, on the impulse of the moment, had gone near to striking him down; in face of the pistol and common-sense he lowered his hand, cursed him, and bade him keep his distance for the cur he was; and so with the width of the track between them the two rode on, like dogs ill-coupled, Eubank keeping a squinting watch on Hunt's movements, Hunt with his face hard set, and a gleam of fear in his eyes.

A little later he spied his daughter waiting and watching for him, on the dyke near the farm—a lissom, graceful figure, with wind-blown hair and skirts, visible half a mile away. Possibly he wished then that he had struck hard and once while the man and he were alone on the Marsh. But it was too late. She was there, and in a moment the meeting so long and tenderly anticipated was over, and the girl, gently disengaging herself with wet cheeks from his arms, turned to his companion.

"You may go, Mr. Eubank," she said austerely. "We do not need you. My father is at home now."

But the apothecary, cringing and smiling, faltered that he was—that he was coming to the house.

The words were barely audible, for his courage, not his malice, failed him under her eyes. At any rate she did not understand. "To our house?" she said.

"Yes," he answered, mouthing nervously, and looking his meanest, in his vain endeavour to appear at ease.

Still she did not comprehend, and she looked to her father for light. "Mr. Eubank is quartered on us," he said grimly.

And then for certain he wished that he had closed with the man while they were alone; and had taken the chance of what might follow, pistol or no pistol. For he saw the healthy brown of sun and wind fade from her cheeks, and her grey eyes dilate with sudden terror; and he read in these signs the perfect confirmation of the misgiving he had begun to entertain. He knew as certainly as if she had told him that Mr. Fayle, of Fawlcourt, was hidden at the farm. And what was worse, that Eubank, if he had eyes, could not fail to know it also.

It was a relief to all three when a soldier sauntered into sight, mooning up the path from the farm, and civilly greeting the owner, said something about drinking his health. No further words passed then between them, but all moved together towards the house, each avoiding the other's eyes. The threshold reached, there was a momentary pause, the girl looking full at the intruder with a flame of passion in her face, as if she defied him to enter. But Eubank's eyes were lowered, he saw nothing, and with a smirk, and a poor show of making apology, he went in.

Hunt thought of force, and weighed the odds in his mind. But fresh from prison, under the ban of Government, and with a wholesome dread of the Marshalsea, he shrank from the attempt. And matters, once they were in the house, went so quietly, that he began to fancy that he had been mistaken. For one thing, the girl sought no private word with him, was obtrusively public, and once gripped the nettle danger in a way that startled him. It was at the evening meal. Eubank, ill at ease and suspicious, was stealing glances this way and that, his one eye on the settle that screened the entrance, the other on the staircase door that led to the upper floor. On a sudden she rose as if she must speak or choke. "Mr. Eubank," she cried, "you are here to hunt down Mr. Fayle! You think that he is in my room! My room! I read it in your eyes, you cur! You traitor!"

"Hush!" Hunt said in warning. This was no open fight such as he had dared a score of times; and the malice in the man's face frightened him.

"But, I will speak!" she cried, fighting with her passion. "He thinks it, and he shall search! Go—go now I Leave your men here, sir, to watch, and do you see for yourself that he is not there! And then leave the house!"

He was not at all for going to search, and cringed and muttered an apology; but she would have him, and as good as forced him. Then, when he had searched as much as he pleased—and it was little, with her burning eyes watching him from the doorway—she brought him down again and bade him go. "Go!" she cried.

"I never thought that he was there," he said slyly, smiling at the floor. And of course he did not go, and she could not make him; and the desperate attempt failed as hopelessly as her father could have told her it would.

The whole position was strange. The tall clock ticked in the corner of the great warm panelled kitchen; where the fire shone cosily on delft and pewter, and on the china dogs and Nankin idols that skippers, bringing cargoes of Hollands and Mechlin, had given to the Owler's daughter. Through the open window the belated bees could be heard among the hollyhocks, and a frugal swallow hawked to and fro for flies. The quiet that falls on a farm in the evening lay on everything.

But within was a difference. There, to say nothing of the soldiers, who, irritated by Eubank's supervision, hung about the open windows listening sullenly, the three never ceased to watch and observe one another, ready to spring, ready to fall back at a sign. Of all, perhaps, Hunt was most mystified. He knew that in the search which had attended his arrest the premises had been ransacked from roof to cellar; that every locker and hiding-place had been laid open and discovered; and that apart from this Eubank, who had played jackal in many of his adventures, was familiar with all, even the most secret. Where, then, was Fayle?

He learned only too soon. When it came to closing time, "Your woman is not in," said one of the soldiers; and he looked at the girl.

"Woman?" said Eubank, with meaning; "I have seen no woman."

"She was here at midday," the man answered, without suspicion.

Perhaps the girl had been expecting it, for she did not blench, though Eubank's eyes were on her face. "Then leave the door on the latch," she said; and she added, with fine contempt, "If a wench has a lover you need not tell the town!"

She went upstairs with that, and Hunt, who was tired and mystified and in a poor humour—things at home promising to turn out as ill as matters abroad, went to his den off the kitchen and shut himself in to sulk. For the use of Eubank and the soldiers two pallets had been laid in a room on the farther side of the kitchen if they chose to use them; but with the door on the latch Hunt had a shrewd suspicion that they would sit up and watch. They soon fell silent, however, and though the remembrance of the events which had happened since he last lay there kept him long waking, and in miserable mood, he heard neither voices nor movements. For himself he was sick at heart thinking of the girl and her lover, and furious at the treachery of the hound who pursued her. Nevertheless, Nature would have its way, and he was in the act of sinking into slumber when a cry which pierced the night and was followed by a discord of voices, raised in sharp contention, brought him startled to his feet.

He had little doubt that Eubank and his men had seized Fayle in the act of entering the house; and enraged, yet bitterly aware of his impotence, he huddled on some clothes, and in a twinkling was out of his room. But in the kitchen, of which the outer door stood wide open to the night, was only Eubank; who, without his wig, and with a pistol poised in his uncertain hand, had entrenched himself in the angle between the settle and the hearth. The smuggler, seeing no one else, vented his wrath on him.

"You dog!" he cried. "Are honest men to be kept awake by such as you? What does this mean?"

"It means that we have got your fine son-in-law!" the other retorted with venom. "And we are going to keep him. So your distance, if you please. I know you of old, and if you come within a yard of me I will put a ball into you. Now mark that!"

"You have got him?" said Hunt, restraining himself with difficulty. "Where?"

"They are bringing him," Eubank answered. "You will see him soon enough." And then, as one of the soldiers appeared in the doorway, "Have you got him?" the apothecary cried eagerly.

"Ay, ay," the man said.

"But where is he?"

"Hughes and Lort are bringing him."

"Are they enough?" Eubank cried anxiously.

"Plenty," the soldier answered with some scorn. "He made no fight."

"I'll lay you caught him under her window?" Eubank returned, licking his lips.

The man nodded; then stood twiddling his cap, and looking ashamed of himself. For Kate Hunt had just appeared at the open staircase door, and thence, raised a step above the floor, with a hand on each post, was taking in the scene.

Eubank—who did not see her—chuckled. "I thought so," he said, with an evil grin; and between his bald head and his vile triumph he looked as ugly as sin itself. "I knew he would be there. She did not deceive me, with her door on the latch!"

Pistol, or no pistol, Hunt nearly fell upon him. The owler only refrained because he became aware of his daughter's presence, and to his great bewilderment read in her face not horror or misery, but a strange passionate relief. He turned from her—they were bringing in the prisoner. It was no surprise to him when Eubank, with a howl of consternation, stepped back almost into the fire. "You fools!" the apothecary cried, all his malignity appearing in his face, "that is not the man! That is not——"

"Mr. Fayle?" said the prisoner coolly. "No, it is not. And yet, Mr. Eubank, I think you know me. Or, you should know me. You have seen me often enough."

The apothecary stared, started, drew a deep breath of relief, and was himself again. "Yes, I know you—Mr. Birkenhead," he said. "I have lost Fayle, but I have won a thousand guineas. Lads!" he continued, raising his voice almost to a scream, "we have shot at the pigeon and killed the crow! We have killed the crow! It is Birkenhead, the Post—the Jacobite Post! And there is a thousand guineas on his head!"

Hunt gathered himself together. "Mr. Birkenhead," he said, "we are two to four, but say the word, and——"

"I'll say a word for you presently," the Jacobite answered with a quick look of acknowledgment, "where we are going. But first, to show Mr. Eubank that he is more lucky than he thinks, and has caught his pigeon as well as his crow. Fayle," he continued, raising his voice, "come in!"

A gawky, long-limbed woman stalked in, smiling grimly at Eubank, but with the tail of his eye on the girl in the doorway. Eubank drew back, and the colour faded from his cheeks. He breathed hard, and the pistol in his hand wavered. "Look here," he began. "Let us talk about this."

But the Jacobite raised his hand for silence. "Dewhurst!" he cried.

A tall, swarthy seaman, with a scarred cheek and a knitted nightcap, stepped briskly in, a cutlass in his hand.

"Fawcus!"

Another entered, who but for the scar might have been his twin.

"Bonaventure! And Mr. Eubank," Birkenhead continued, lowering his voice and speaking with treacherous civility, "let me warn you not to be too free with that pistol, for these good fellows will assuredly put you on the fire if any one is hurt. Is Bonaventure there? Yes. Moyreau? Yes. Valentin? I am sure that you understand me, Mr. Eubank. You will be careful."

But the warning was needless. As man after man filed in and formed up before him—all armed to the teeth, and all wild, reckless fellows in sea-boots, nightcaps, and tarry jerkins—Eubank's craven heart melted within him. Setting his pistol down on the settle, he stood speechless, sallow, shaking with fear, such fear as almost stays the heart, yet leaves the brain working—leaves the man created in God's image to be dragged out to his death, writhing and shrieking—a sight to haunt brave men's memories.

He was spared that, yet came near to it. "Mr. Eubank," said Birkenhead sternly, "you will come with me. I have a sloop at the old landing-place, and before daylight we shall be in Calais roads. There is a cell in the Bastille waiting for you, and I shall see you in it. I'll hold you a hostage for Bernardi."

The wretch shrieked and fell on his knees and grovelled, crying for mercy; but Birkenhead only answered, "Get up, man, get up; or must my men prick you?" And then to the others, "Mr. Hunt," he continued, "you too must come with us. But have no fear. Believe me you will be better there than here, and shall be well reported. Mr. Fayle and your daughter will come, of course. Tie the others and leave them. And hurry, men, hurry. Bring your money, Mr. Hunt; King James has none too much of that. I can give you ten minutes to pack, and then we must be moving lest they take the alarm in Romney."

As a fact they took no alarm in Romney. But a shepherd, belated that night with a sick ewe, saw a long line of lanthorns go bobbing across the marsh to the sea, and went home and told his neighbours that Hunt was at his old tricks again. One of them, knowing that the soldiers were there, laughed in his face and went to see, and learning the truth carried the story into Romney, whence it spread to London and brought down a mob of horse and foot and messengers, and from one end of England to the other the descent and the audacity of it were a nine days' wonder. However, by that time the nest was cold and the birds long flown, and Birkenhead, with one more plume in his crest, was preening his feathers at St. Germains.