lence--while, if
he could not absolutely remember him, his suspicions would be so much
aroused by St. Georges's suddenly altered plans as, perhaps, to
absolutely verify them, or to cause him to have the stranger denied
exit from the city. Therefore, at all hazards, he must remain the
intended night. It was the only way in which to avoid aiding the
fellow's hazy recollections, which, after all, might not have taken
actual form by the next day's dawn. And there was another thing:
however much he might overmaster Nature sufficiently to be able to
proceed without rest, the horse could not do so. He must, he decided,
remain, and trust to chance.

"What a miserable, what an untoward fate is mine!" he murmured; "could
Fortune play me worse? Of all men to light on, that it must be this
brute--whom, if I could do so in safety, I would slay for his
countless cruelties to me and others! It is hard, hard, hard! There
are thousands of inns in France to which I might have gone without
meeting any who could recognise me, yet at the very first I stumble on
I encounter one who knows me, and knows what I have been. A galley
slave!--a man doomed for life, while there, to that brutal work; a man
who, since he has escaped, is doomed to death. Ah! well! I am in God's
hands. As he has protected me before, may he do so again!"

He threw himself upon the bed as he uttered his little prayer--he must
sleep at all cost. Even though Andre should denounce him to-morrow ere
he could quit Bayeux--even though he should have to join _la chaine_
again on its road to the galleys--ay! even though the scaffold was to
witness his death in the morning, his wornout frame must rest. He had
been without sleep for now almost the whole time that had elapsed
since Tourville's fleet had first loomed up before the English; it
seemed to him that he could scarce recall when he slept last. And
what terrible events he had gone through since that time!

Had he tried to keep awake, he could scarce have done so; as it was he
made no such effort. Wrapped in the coverlet, the sword unbuckled but
grasped in his hand, he stretched his body out and gave himself up to
slumber--slumber deep and heavy as that of a drugged man.

He would not have awakened when he did, would have slept on, perhaps, for
hours longer, had not a continued deep, droning, noise--interrupted now
and again by a shriller one--at last succeeded in thoroughly rousing
him--a noise that came as it seemed fro