up his stand
at an angle of the street from whence he could see both the gate on one
side of him and the thin line of the canal intersecting the street at
its further end.

Unless Percy came within the next five minutes the gates would be
closed and the difficulties of crossing the barrier would be increased a
hundredfold. The market gardeners with their covered carts filed out
of the gate one by one; the labourers on foot were returning to their
homes; there was a group of stonemasons, a few road-makers, also a
number of beggars, ragged and filthy, who herded somewhere in the
neighbourhood of the canal.

In every form, under every disguise, Armand hoped to discover Percy.
He could not stand still for very long, but strode up and down the road
that skirts the fortifications at this point.

There were a good many idlers about at this hour; some men who had
finished their work, and meant to spend an hour or so in one of the
drinking shops that abounded in the neighbourhood of the wharf; others
who liked to gather a small knot of listeners around them, whilst they
discoursed on the politics of the day, or rather raged against the
Convention, which was all made up of traitors to the people's welfare.

Armand, trying manfully to play his part, joined one of the groups that
stood gaping round a street orator. He shouted with the best of them,
waved his cap in the air, and applauded or hissed in unison with the
majority. But his eyes never wandered for long away from the gate whence
Percy must come now at any moment--now or not at all.

At what precise moment the awful doubt took birth in his mind the young
man could not afterwards have said. Perhaps it was when he heard the
roll of drums proclaiming the closing of the gates, and witnessed the
changing of the guard.

Percy had not come. He could not come now, and he (Armand) would have
the night to face without news of Jeanne. Something, of course, had
detained Percy; perhaps he had been unable to get definite information
about Jeanne; perhaps the information which he had obtained was too
terrible to communicate.

If only Sir Andrew Ffoulkes had been there, and Armand had had some one
to talk to, perhaps then he would have found sufficient strength of mind
to wait with outward patience, even though his nerves were on the rack.

Darkness closed in around him, and with the darkness came the full
return of the phantoms that had assailed him in the house of the Square
d