hannel. Crushed under
his leather girdle was a little cape, or a garment of that kind, of
velvet so lustrous that it shone in the dark place where I saw it, as
the eyes shine in a toad. Nor it only: before he rolled over and hid it
again, I espied embroidered on one corner of the velvet a stiff gold
crown!

It was with difficulty that I repressed a cry. Cold, damp, aching, I
felt the heat run through me like wine. A crown! A little purple cape!
And taken beyond doubt from the infant he had stolen last night! Then
last night--last night I had carried the King! I had carried the King of
France in my arms.

I no longer found it hard to understand the man's terror of yesterday;
or his grief and despair of this morning. He had indeed played for a
great stake; he had risked torture and the wheel; death in its most
horrible form. And that for which he had risked so much he had
lost!--lost!

I looked at him with new eyes, and a sort of wonder: and had scarcely
time to compose my face, when, the paroxysm of his fury spent, he rose,
and looking at me askance, to see how I took his actions, he asked me
sullenly whither I was going.

"To Monseigneur's," I said cunningly: had I answered, "To the Palais
Royal," he would have suspected me.

"To the Bishop's?"

"Where else?"

"To be beaten again?" he sneered.

I said nothing to that, but asked him whither he was going.

"God knows," he said. "God knows!"

But when I went out, he accompanied me; and we slunk silently, like the
pair of night-birds we were, through lanes and alleys until we were
fairly in town again. By that time the sun was up and the market people
were beginning to enter the city. Here and there eyes took curious note
of my disorder: and thinking of the company I was in, I trembled, and
wondered that the alarm was not abroad and the bells proclaiming us from
every tower. I was more than content, therefore, when my companion at
the back of the Temple halted before a small door in a blind wall. Over
against it stood another small door in the opposite wall.

"Do you stay here?" I said.

He swore churlishly. "What is that to you?" he said, looking up and
down. "Go your way, idiot."

I was glad to affect a like ill-humour, shrugged my shoulders, and
lounged on without looking back. But my brain was on fire. The King! The
four-year-old King! What was I to do? To whom to go with my knowledge?
And then--even then, while I paused hesitating, I heard steps runni