world below them. But the tumbrels that made
their daily ghastly journey did not pass their way. They heard nothing
of the roll of drums, of the shrieks of the mob, of the dull crash of
the knife, of the streams of blood, in the Place. They saw nothing of
the horrors of the prison-houses, in which, day by day, and week by
week, the doomed citizens made their brief sojourn on the road to death.
They did not even know, as I did, that one evening, in one of the sad
batches which rode from the Austin Convent to the Conciergerie, and next
morning from the Conciergerie to the guillotine, rode a broken-down
couple called Lestrange, and beside them, in the same cart, the _ci-
devant_ Citizen Cazin.

As the Citoyennes Regnier sat patiently and knitted red caps for the
blood-drunken citizens without, their gentle ears may have caught
occasional shouts and rushings of feet, and they may have guessed
something of the tragedies that were being enacted below. But they kept
their own counsel, and looked out seldom from the little window, and
talked in whispers of the shadows that flitted across Lough Swilly, and
the happy life that was to follow after all this buffeting and exile.

Alas! that was not to be yet. For all their courage, their cheeks grew
daily more pale; and into that little damp, cold attic, from which they
never ventured except at night, and where, as poverty gradually entered
by the window, the fire went out on the hearth, the stress of "the
terror" at last penetrated.

Our hostess, the grim woman of whom I spoke, was the first to lose
nerve, and during the day, when I was away, would come and retail some
of the horrors she herself had witnessed. I could tell by their blank
looks when I returned that some one had been tampering with their peace,
and I fear the warmth with which I expostulated with the disturber did
us all no good.

Another day, also when I was absent, the police made a visitation; and
though my two mistresses passed muster, they carried off one shrieking
victim from the floor below--a widow, whose only crime was that her
husband had once been in the service of his king. Her cries of terror,
as they dragged her to her doom, rang in my lady's ears for weeks, and
unnerved her altogether.

A still worse fright befell them, one early morning, when we sought the
fresh air in the direction of the Champ de Mars, where I hoped we should
be safe from crowds of all kinds. At a turning of the road w