aque, quietly; "but I won't
weary you with any more words about myself. My story is told."

"All?" asked Trudaine. He looked searchingly, almost suspiciously, at
Lomaque, as he put the question. "All?" he repeated. "Yours is a short
story, indeed, my good friend! Perhaps you have forgotten some of it?"

Again Lomaque fidgeted and hesitated.

"Is it not a little hard on an old man to be always asking questions
of him, and never answering one of his inquiries in return?" he said to
Rose, very gayly as to manner, but rather uneasily as to look.

"He will not speak out till we two are alone," thought Trudaine. "It is
best to risk nothing, and to humor him."

"Come, come," he said aloud; "no grumbling. I admit that it is your turn
to hear our story now; and I will do my best to gratify you. But before
I begin," he added, turning to his sister, "let me suggest, Rose, that
if you have any household matters to settle upstairs--"

"I know what you mean," she interrupted, hurriedly, taking up the work
which, during the last few minutes, she had allowed to drop into her
lap; "but I am stronger than you think; I can face the worst of our
recollections composedly. Go on, Louis; pray go on--I am quite fit to
stop and hear you."

"You know what we suffered in the first days of our suspense, after the
success of your stratagem," said Trudaine, turning to Lomaque. "I think
it was on the evening after we had seen you for the last time at St.
Lazare that strange, confused rumors of an impending convulsion in Paris
first penetrated within our prison walls. During the next few days the
faces of our jailers were enough to show us that those rumors were true,
and that the Reign of Terror was actually threatened with overthrow at
the hands of the Moderate Party. We had hardly time to hope everything
from this blessed change before the tremendous news of Robespierre's
attempted suicide, then of his condemnation and execution, reached us.
The confusion produced in the prison was beyond all description. The
accused who had been tried and the accused who had not been tried got
mingled together. From the day of Robespierre's arrest, no orders came
to the authorities, no death-lists reached the prison. The jailers,
terrified by rumors that the lowest accomplices of the tyrant would be
held responsible, and be condemned with him, made no attempt to maintain
order. Some of them--that hunchback man among the rest--deserted their
duties altogethe