a battle-field--or on the
scaffold. But on the shore of mine own land will I not set a foot,
unless"--he paused a moment as if the more surely to launch his phrase
of denunciation--"unless the Woman-clad-in-Scarlet, Mother of
Abominations, returns thither in her power! Then and then alone will
John Stirling (called Jean-aux-Choux) tread Scottish earth."

So, without a good-bye, Jean-aux-Choux went out into the night and the
storm, his great piked staff thrust before him, and the firelight from
the sparkling olive-roots gleaming red on the brass-bound sheath of the
dagger which had been wet with the blood of Guise.

Then the Professor, looking across at the lovers, who had drawn together
in the semi-obscurity, murmured to himself, "Which is better--to love or
to go lonely? Which is happier--John d'Albret--or I? Who hath better
served the Lord--Valentine the cloistered Carmelite, or Jean-aux-Choux
the Calvinist, gone forth into the world to fight after his fashion the
fight of faith?"

Then aloud he said, speaking so suddenly that every one in the
comfortable kitchen started, "Who art thou that judgest another man's
servant? To his own master he standeth or falleth!"

Without, Jean-aux-Choux faced the storm and was happy. Within, the
lovers sat hand in hand in a great peace, and were happy also. And in
her narrow cell, who shall say that Valentine la Nina had not also some
happiness? She had given her life for another.

THE END

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The White Plumes of Navarre, by
Samuel Rutherford Crockett

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