in his chair, and drummed
his fingers upon the arm. Thereupon the other--the greffier of the
court--settled down at his desk beneath the jurats, and peered into an
open book before him, his eyes close to the page, reading silently by
the meagre light of a candle from the great desk behind him.

Now a fat and ponderous avocat rose up and was about to speak, but the
Bailly, with a peevish gesture, waved him down, and he settled heavily
into place again.

At last the door at which the greffier had tapped opened, and a gaunt
figure in a red robe came out. Standing in the middle of the room he
motioned towards the great pew opposite the Attorney-General. Slowly the
twenty-four men of the grand jury following him filed into place and sat
themselves down in the shadows. Then the gaunt figure--the Vicomte or
high sheriff--bowing to the Bailly and the jurats, went over and took
his seat beside the Attorney-General. Whereupon the Bailly leaned
forward and droned a question to the Grand Enquete in the shadow. One
rose up from among the twenty-four, and out of the dusk there came in
reply to the Judge a squeaking voice:

"We find the Prisoner at the Bar more Guilty than Innocent."

A shudder ran through the court. But some one not in the room shuddered
still more violently. From the gable window of a house in the Rue des
Tres Pigeons, a girl had sat the livelong day, looking, looking into the
court-room. She had watched the day decline, the evening come, and the
lighting of the crassets and the candles, and had waited to hear the
words that meant more to her than her own life. At last the great moment
came, and she could hear the foreman's voice whining the fateful words,
"More Guilty than Innocent."

It was Carterette Mattingley, and the prisoner at the bar was her
father.

CHAPTER XXXIII

Mattingley's dungeon was infested with rats and other vermin, he had
only straw for his bed, and his food and drink were bread and water. The
walls were damp with moisture from the Fauxbie running beneath, and a
mere glimmer of light came through a small barred window. Superstition
had surrounded the Vier Prison with horrors. As carts passed under the
great archway, its depth multiplied the sounds so powerfully, the echoes
were so fantastic, that folk believed them the roarings of fiendish
spirits. If a mounted guard hurried through, the reverberation of
the drum-beats and the clatter of hoofs were so uncouth that children
stoppe