, wintry
morning filtered through the grimy panes of the window. Armand jumped
out of bed, aching of limb but resolute of mind. There was no doubt that
Percy had failed in discovering Jeanne's whereabouts; but where a mere
friend had failed a lover was more likely to succeed.

The rough clothes which he had worn yesterday were the only ones he had.
They would, of course, serve his purpose better than his own, which
he had left at Blakeney's lodgings yesterday. In half an hour he was
dressed, looking a fairly good imitation of a labourer out of work.

He went to a humble eating house of which he knew, and there, having
ordered some hot coffee with a hunk of bread, he set himself to think.

It was quite a usual thing these days for relatives and friends of
prisoners to go wandering about from prison to prison to find out where
the loved ones happened to be detained. The prisons were over full
just now; convents, monasteries, and public institutions had all been
requisitioned by the Government for the housing of the hundreds of
so-called traitors who had been arrested on the barest suspicion, or at
the mere denunciation of an evil-wisher.

There were the Abbaye and the Luxembourg, the erstwhile convents of
the Visitation and the Sacre-Coeur, the cloister of the Oratorians, the
Salpetriere, and the St. Lazare hospitals, and there was, of course,
the Temple, and, lastly, the Conciergerie, to which those prisoners were
brought whose trial would take place within the next few days, and whose
condemnation was practically assured.

Persons under arrest at some of the other prisons did sometimes come
out of them alive, but the Conciergerie was only the ante-chamber of the
guillotine.

Therefore Armand's idea was to visit the Conciergerie first. The sooner
he could reassure himself that Jeanne was not in immediate danger the
better would he be able to endure the agony of that heart-breaking
search, that knocking at every door in the hope of finding his beloved.

If Jeanne was not in the Conciergerie, then there might be some hope
that she was only being temporarily detained, and through Armand's
excited brain there had already flashed the thought that mayhap the
Committee of General Security would release her if he gave himself up.

These thoughts, and the making of plans, fortified him mentally and
physically; he even made a great effort to eat and drink, knowing that
his bodily strength must endure if it was going to be