best I should not know where
you hide her. Those rogues have tricks that make it as well to know
nothing. Farewell, Madame, I commend you to all the saints till I come
for you on Monday morning.'

Eustacie gave him her hand to kiss, and tried to thank him, but somehow
her heart sank, and she felt more lonely than ever, when entirely cast
loose among these absolute strangers, than amongst her own vassals. Even
the farm-kitchen, large, stone-built, and scrupulously clean, seemed
strange and dreary after the little, smoky, earth-built living-rooms in
which her peasantry were content to live, and she never had seemed to
herself so completely desolate; but all the time she was so wearied out
with her long and painful walk, that she had no sooner taken some food
than she began to doze in her chair.

'Father,' said the good wife, 'we had better take _la pauvrette_ to her
rest at once.'

'Ah! must I go any farther?' sighed Eustacie.

'It is but a few fields beyond the yard, _ma petite_,' said the good
woman consolingly; 'and it will be safer to take you there ere we need a
light.'

The sun had just set on a beautiful evening of a spring that happily for
Eustacie had been unusually warm and mild, when they set forth, the dame
having loaded her husband with a roll of bedding, and herself taking a
pitcher of mild and a loaf of bread, whilst Eustacie, as usual, carried
her own small parcel of clothes and jewels. The way was certainly
not long to any one less exhausted than she; it was along a couple of
fields, and then through a piece of thicket, where Rotrou held back the
boughs and his wife almost dragged her on with kind encouraging words,
till they came up to a stone ivy-covered wall, and coasting along it
to a tower, evidently a staircase turret. Here Rotrou, holding aside an
enormous bush of ivy, showed the foot of a winding staircase, and his
wife assured her that she would not have far to climb.

She knew where she was now. She had heard of the old Refectory of the
Knights Templars. Partly demolished by the hatred of the people upon the
abolition of the Order, it had ever since lain waste, and had become the
centre of all the ghostly traditions of the country; the locality of
all the most horrid tales of REVENANTS told under the breath at Dame
Perrine's hearth or at recreation hour at Bellaise. Her courage was not
proof against spiritual terrors. She panted and leant against the wall,
as she faintly exclaimed, 'The T