rts, of handsome gentlemen, and Lochiel, true chevalier--perhaps a
better than his king!

It was of these Count Victor spoke--of their faith, their valiancies,
their shifts of penury and pride. He had used often to consort with them
at Cammercy, and later on in Paris. If the truth were to be told, they
had made a man of him, and now he was generous enough to confess it.

"I owe them much, your exiles, Mademoiselle Olivia," said he. "When
first I met with them I was a man without an ideal or a name, without a
scrap of faith or a cause to quarrel for. It is not good for the young,
that, Baron, is it? To be passing the days in an _ennui_ and the nights
below the lamps? Well, I met your Scots after Dettingen, renewed the old
acquaintance I had made at Cam-mercy, and found the later exiles better
than the first--than the Balhaldies, the Glengarries, Mur-rays,
and Sullivans. They were different, _ces gens-la_. Ordinarily they
rendezvoused in the Taverne Tourtel of St. Germains, and that gloomy
palace shared their devotions with Scotland, whence they came and of
which they were eternally talking, like men in a nostalgia. James and
his Jacquette were within these walls, often indifferent enough, I fear,
about the cause our friends were exiled there for; and Charles, between
Luneville and Liege or Poland and London, was not at the time an
inspiring object of veneration, if you will permit me to says so, M. le
Baron. But what does it matter? the cause was there, an image to keep
the good hearts strong, unselfish, and expectant. Ah! the songs they
sang, so full of that hopeful melancholy of the glens you speak of,
mademoiselle; the stories they told of Tearlach's Year; the hopes that
bound them in a brotherhood--and binds them yet, praise _le bon Dieu!_
That was good for me. Yes; I like your exiled compatriots very much,
Mademoiselle Olivia. And yet there was a _maraud_ or two among them; no
fate could be too hard for the spies who would betray them."

For the first time in many hours Count Victor remembered that he had an
object in Scotland, but with it somehow Cecile was not associated.

"Mungo has been telling me about the spy, Count Victor. Oh, the
wickedness of it! I feel black, burning shame that one with a Highland
name and a Highland mother would take a part like yon. I would not think
there could be men in the world so bad. They must have wicked mothers to
make such sons; the ghost of a good mother would cry from her gr