rop of bitterness be gathered to the
uttermost.

Now, in the brightness of the embers, between the fitful flames of
crumbling wood, spreads before his eyes the dreary strand near
Quiberon, immense in the gathering darkness of a boisterous evening.
Well hidden under the stone table of a Druidical men-hir glows a small
camp-fire sedulously kept alive by Rene for the service of The Lady.
She, wrapped up in a coarse peasant-cloak, pensively gazes into the
cheerless smoke and holds her worn and muddy boots to the smouldering
wood in the vain hope of warmth.

And Adrian stands silently behind her, brooding on many things--on the
vicissitudes of that desultory war which has left them not a roof
whereunder they can lay their heads, during which the little English
contingent has melted from them one by one; on the critical action of
the morrow when the republican columns, now hastening to oppose the
landing of the great royalist expedition to Quiberon (that supreme
effort upon which all their hopes centre) must be surprised and cut
off at whatever cost; on the mighty doings to follow, which are to
complete the result of the recent sea fight off Ushant and crown their
devoted toil with victory at last....

And through his thoughts he watches the pretty foot, in its hideous
disguise of patched, worn, ill-fitting leather, and he sees it as on
the first day of their meeting, in its gleaming slipper and dainty
silken stocking.

Now and then an owl-cry, repeated from point to point, tells of
unremitting guard, but for which, in the vast silence, none could
suspect that a thousand men and more are lying stretched upon the
plain all around them, fireless, well-nigh without food, yet patiently
waiting for the morrow when their chiefs shall lead them to death; nor
that, in a closer circle, within call, are some fifty _gars_, remnant
of the indomitable "Savenaye band," and tacitly sworn bodyguard to The
Lady who came back from ease and safety over seas to share their
peril.

No sound besides, but the wind as it whistles and moans over the
heath--and the two are together in the mist which comes closing in
upon them as if to shroud them from all the rest, for even Rene has
crept away, to sleep perhaps.

She turns at last towards him, her small face in the dying light of
this sullen evening, how wan and weather-beaten!

"Pensive, as usual, cousin?" she says in English, and extends her
hand, browned and scratched, that was once so ex