selle did seize upon her--well, she is a woman! a
better nurse than the bishop's servant."

"Ah! the bishop's servant! That too has to be explained. What was he
doing with her? I have wondered all these years--De Roquemaure's dying
words told nothing. 'He had got her safe,' he gasped at the last. But
why he? Why he! Oh! shall I ever know all?"

"Ere long, I hope, my friend," said Boussac, "ere long now."

As he spoke, they mounted the last hill that guarded the capital of
Champagne and approached the summit. When there, they would be able to
look down upon the old city--nay, more, from there they would scarce
be a musket shot from the manoir, surrounded now by its ripening
vineyards and its woods. She, the kidnapper of his child, would be in
his grasp, must answer his demand!

Upon the summit of that hill still stood the gibbet on which the
peasant woman's husband had swung, but the body was gone--long since,
doubtless--and the gallows tree was bare. "Perhaps," said St. Georges,
"the poor thing obtained him decent burial at last. I hope so." Then,
seeing a peasant coming along the road, he spoke to him, and asked him
what had become of the corpse that hung there four years ago? The
fellow looked up at him sullenly enough and stared hard for some
moments; then he said:

"You are not De Roquemaure?"

"Nay."

"What affair is it then of yours?"

St. Georges explained briefly to him how he had met the dead man's
wife and pitied her, and asked where she was.

"Mad," the man said. "Quite mad. Her brother keeps her." Then he
muttered: "A curse on the De Roquemaures, and on him above all! His
father was bad; he is worse."

"You need curse him no more," St. Georges answered; "he is dead!"

"Dead is he? Then he was the last; the woman counts not. Dead! Oh,
that she whom he injured so could understand it! Dead, thank God! I
would it were so with all aristocrats! France has suffered long."

A hundred years almost were to elapse ere the peasant's hopes were to
be partly realized, and others like the De Roquemaures to meet their
reward; but none foresaw it in those days. Later the clouds gathered,
but even then the fury of the coming storm was not perceived.

"Give her this," said St. Georges, putting some of his few remaining
pieces in his hand, he having provided himself with French gold for
his English guineas.

"Or give it to the brother who has charge of her. I, too, have
suffered at the hands of the De Roquemau