were pursuing them so closely that we arrived just after them.
I found the body of my brother still warm. In one of his wounds a sprig
was stuck with these words: 'Shot as a brigand by me, Claude Flageolet,
corporal of the Third Battalion of Paris.' I took my brother's body, and
had the skin removed from his breast. I vowed that this skin, pierced
with three holes, should eternally cry vengeance before my eyes. I made
it my battle waistcoat."

"Ah!" exclaimed Morgan, with a certain astonishment, in which, for
the first time, was mingled something akin to terror--"Ah! then that
waistcoat is made of your brother's skin? And the trousers?"

"Oh!" replied the Vendean, "the trousers, that's another matter.
They are made of the skin of Claude Flageolet, corporal of the Third
Battalion of Paris."

At that moment the voice again called out, in the same order, the names
of Morgan, Montbar, Adler and d'Assas.

Morgan rushed out of the study, crossed the dancing-hall from end
to end, and made his way to a little salon on the other side of the
dressing-room. His three companions, Montbar, Adler and d'Assas, were
there already. With them was a young man in the government livery of
a bearer of despatches, namely a green and gold coat. His boots were
dusty, and he wore a visored cap and carried the despatch-box, the
essential accoutrements of a cabinet courier.

One of Cassini's maps, on which could be followed the whole lay of the
land, was spread on the table.

Before saying why this courier was there, and with what object the map
was unfolded, let us cast a glance at the three new personages whose
names had echoed through the ballroom, and who are destined to play an
important part in the rest of this history.

The reader already knows Morgan, the Achilles and the Paris of this
strange association; Morgan, with his blue eyes, his black hair, his
tall, well-built figure, graceful, easy, active bearing; his eye, which
was never without animation; his mouth, with its fresh lips and white
teeth, that was never without a smile; his remarkable countenance,
composed of mingling elements that seemed so foreign to each
other--strength and tenderness, gentleness and energy; and, through it
all, that bewildering expression of gayety that was at times alarming
when one remembered that this man was perpetually rubbing shoulders with
death, and the most terrifying of all deaths--that of the scaffold.

As for d'Assas, he was a man from t