t you, _mon enfant_, in
that great New York."

"My beloved Capitaine, how is it that I find you thus?" I exclaimed as
I went to within his reach and allowed that he take my two hands in
his poor shackled ones and put warm kisses of greeting upon them.

And it was while I was shedding tears of pity for the imprisonment of
that great man of France in that mountain hut in America, as he kissed
my hands, that I raised my eyes to encounter a cold lightning as of a
flash on steel, from under the black brows of my Gouverneur Faulkner
of the State of Harpeth, that again froze the blood in my heart.

"You?" he asked of me in a voice that was of the same coldness and
sharpness as that steel, and his beautiful mouth was set into one
straight line as he flung into my face that one word.

CHAPTER XIX

ALL IS LOST

And to that word of challenge I made no answer, but I raised my head
and looked into his eyes with a dignity that came to me as my right
from suffering. So regarding each other, we stood for a very short
minute in which the Capitaine, the Count de Lasselles, raised his head
from his kisses of salutation upon my hands.

"And, _mon enfant_, is this the good Uncle to whose care you came
into America?" asked that Capitaine, the Count de Lasselles, as he
reached out his imprisoned hands for a greeting to my relative.

I did not make any answer to that question. My head raised itself yet
higher, and I looked my Gouverneur Faulkner again full in the face
while I waited to hear what he would answer of my kinship to him.

"Sir, I am the friend of General Carruthers and I am also the Governor
of the State of Harpeth. I have come across the mountains to talk with
you about the business of this contract for mules for your army and I
have brought your young friend to assist me if I should need
translating from or to you. We Americans, Captain, are poor handlers
of any language not our own, and the matter is of much gravity." And
as the Gouverneur Faulkner spoke those words to my Capitaine, the
Count de Lasselles, with a great courtesy but also a great sternness,
in which he named me not as his friend but as the friend of that
Capitaine, the Count de Lasselles, I knew that I was placed by him
among all women liars of the world and that to him his boy Robert of
honor was of a truth dead forever.

"It is indeed of such a gravity that I have come from the English
Canada to make all clear to myself," answered my beloved