t from the tavern, quickly reducing it to a
heap of ashes. It was a strange grave for the charred remains of two men
who yesterday had been full of life. This was a time when things moved
apace and there was no prophesying from day to day.

Long since out of range of the smoke cloud rising in the morning sky,
Richard Barrington and Seth urged their horses along the road.

"Is this a wise journey?" Seth asked suddenly.

"I cannot tell."

"Paris might be safer."

"I promised to carry a message to a woman," Barrington answered. "The
man is dead; there remains my oath. Somewhere before us lies the Chateau
of Beauvais, and that is the way we go."

CHAPTER III

BEAUVAIS

There are few fairer spots in this world than Beauvais. He who has
dreamed of an earthly paradise and sought it out, might well rest here
contented, satisfied. It lies at the top of a long, ascending valley
which twists its way upward from the Swiss frontier into the hills, a
rough and weary road to travel, yet with a new vista of beauty at every
turn. Here are wooded slopes where a dryad might have her dwelling;
yonder some ragged giant towers toward heaven, his scarred rocky
shoulders capped with snow. Below, deep down from the road cut in the
hillside, undulate green pastures, the cattle so small at this distance
that they might be toys set there after a child's fancy; while a torrent
leaping joyously from ledge to ledge might be a babbling brook but for
the sound of its full music which comes upward on the still air, telling
of impetuous force and power. Here eternity seems to have an habitation,
and time to be a thing of naught. The changing seasons may come and go,
storm and tempest may spend their rage, and summer heat and winter frost
work their will, yet that rocky height shall still climb into cloudland,
and those green pastures shall flourish. Centuries ago, eyes long
blinded by the dust of death looked upon this fair scene and understood
something of its everlasting nature; centuries hence, other eyes shall
behold its beauty and still dream of a distant future. We are but
children of a day, brilliant ephemera flashing in a noontide sun; these
silent, watching hills have known generations of others like us, as
brilliant and as short-lived; shall know generations more, unborn as
yet, unthought of.

At the head of this valley, rising suddenly from a stretch of level
land, is a long hill lying like a wedge, its thin edge resting o