n. I shall be well hidden, and within
reach of your mother. And then, when my son is once come--then all will
be well! The peasants will rise in behalf of their young Lord, though
not for a poor helpless woman. No one will dare to dispute his claim,
when I have appealed to the King; and then, Veronique, you shall come
back to me, and all will be well!'

Veronique only began to wail aloud at her mistress' obstinacy. Martin
came up, and rudely silenced her, and said afterwards to his wife, 'Have
a care! That girl has--I verily believe--betrayed her Lady once; and if
she do not do so again, from pure pity and faintness of heart, I shall
be much surprised.'

CHAPTER XVII. THE GHOSTS OF THE TEMPLARS

'Tis said, as through the aisles they passed,
They heard strange voices on the blast,
And through the cloister galleries small,
Which at mid-height thread the chancel wall,
Loud sobs and laughter louder ran,
And voices unlike the voice of man,
As if the fiends kept holiday.
Scott, LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL

'Ill news, Martin, I see by your look!' cried Eustacie, starting to her
feet from the heap of straw on which she was sitting in his cowhouse,
one early April day, about seven weeks since her evasion from the
convent.

'Not so, I hope, Madame, but I do not feel at ease. Monsieur has not
sent for me, nor told me his plans for the morrow, and I much doubt me
whether that bode not a search here. Now I see a plan, provided Madame
would trust herself to a Huguenot.'

'They would guard me for my husband's sake.'

'And could Madame walk half a league, as far as the Grange du Temple?
There live Matthieu Rotrou and his wife, who have, they say, baffled
a hundred times the gendarmes who sought their ministers. No one ever
found a pastor, they say, when Rotrou had been of the congregation; and
if they can do so much for an old preacher with a long tongue, surely
they can for a sweet young lady; and if they could shelter her just for
tomorrow, till the suspicion is over, then would I come for Madame with
my cart, and carry her into Chollet among the trusses of hay, as we had
fixed.'

Eustacie was already tying her cloak, and asking for Lucette; but
she was grieved to hear that Martin had sent her to vespers to disarm
suspicion, and moreover that he meant not to tell her of his new device.
'The creature is honest enough,' he said, 'but the way to be safe with
women is not to let them know.