tunate Queen from that prison
had failed, so now every attempt to reach the imprisoned Scarlet
Pimpernel was equally doomed to bitter disappointment.

The guard-room was filled with soldiers day and night; the windows of
the inner cell, heavily barred, were too small to admit of the passage
of a human body, and they were raised twenty feet from the corridor
below. Sir Andrew had stood in the corridor two days ago, he had looked
on the window behind which he knew that his friend must be eating out
his noble heart in a longing for liberty, and he had realised then that
every effort at help from the outside was foredoomed to failure.

"Courage, Lady Blakeney," he said to Marguerite, when anon they had
crossed the Pont au Change, and were wending their way slowly along the
Rue de la Barillerie; "remember our proud dictum: the Scarlet Pimpernel
never fails! and also this, that whatever messages Blakeney gives you
for us, whatever he wishes us to do, we are to a man ready to do it, and
to give our lives for our chief. Courage! Something tells me that a man
like Percy is not going to die at the hands of such vermin as Chauvelin
and his friends."

They had reached the great iron gates of the house of Justice.
Marguerite, trying to smile, extended her trembling band to this
faithful, loyal comrade.

"I'll not be far," he said. "When you come out do not look to the right
or left, but make straight for home; I'll not lose sight of you for a
moment, and as soon as possible will overtake you. God bless you both."

He pressed his lips on her cold little hand, and watched her tall,
elegant figure as she passed through the great gates until the veil
of falling snow hid her from his gaze. Then with a deep sigh of bitter
anguish and sorrow he turned away and was soon lost in the gloom.

Marguerite found the gate at the bottom of the monumental stairs open
when she arrived. Chauvelin was standing immediately inside the building
waiting for her.

"We are prepared for your visit, Lady Blakeney," he said, "and the
prisoner knows that you are coming."

He led the way down one of the numerous and interminable corridors of
the building, and she followed briskly, pressing her hand against her
bosom there where the folds of her kerchief hid the steel files and the
precious dagger.

Even in the gloom of these ill-lighted passages she realised that she
was surrounded by guards. There were soldiers everywhere; two had stood
behind the doo