essor to Claire, "I
suppose you have your father's papers safe enough?"

The girl blushed and murmured something indefinite. As a matter of fact,
she had made sure of these while he yet lay on the ground, and the Royal
Swiss were firing over her head. It was the instinct of her hunted life.

They left the Sorbonne together, all cloaked and hooded "like three
carrion crows," said the Abbe John. None who saw them would have
supposed that a young maid's face lurked beneath the sombre muffling.
Indeed, beneath that of the Abbe John, curls of the same hue clustered
just as tightly and almost as abundantly.

The street were silent all about the quarter of the University. But
every hundred yards great barricades of barrels and paving-stones, earth
and iron chains, had to be passed. Narrow alleys, the breadth of a man
and no more, were generally left, zig-zagging among the defences. But
almost as often the barricades had to be surmounted, after discovery of
identity, by the aid of friendly pushes and hauls. In all cases,
however, the examination was strict.

At every barricade they were stopped and called upon to declare their
mission. However, the Doctor Anatole was generally recognised by some
scapegrace runaway student, at scrambling horse-play among the pavement
cobbles. At any rate, the Abbe John, who had been conspicuous at the
meetings of the Elect Leaguers as the nephew of the great Cardinal
d'Albret, was universally hailed with favour.

He was also constantly asked who the lady in the hood might be, whom he
was convoying away so secretly. He had but one reply to gentle and
simple.

"Give me a sword, come down hither, and I will afford any three men of
you satisfaction on the spot!"

For, in spite of the Abbe John's peaceful cognomen, his credit as a
pusher of the unbuttoned foil was too good for any to accept his
proposition. They laughed instead.

One of the Duke Guise's "mud-porters" called the pair an ugly name. But
it was (happily) in the Latin quarter, and a score of eager hands
propelled him down into the gutter, where, after having his nose rubbed
in the mire, he was permitted (and even assisted) to retire to the rear.
He rubbed himself as he went and regretted mournfully that these things
had not happened near the street of Saint Antoine.

Altogether they escaped well. The Sorbonne, a difficult place to get
into, is easy to get out of--for those who know how. And so the three,
guided by the Abbe John