ay his passage to
England, that he could only trust to Providence to find him some means
of reaching his present goal.

He had been listened to with kindness, and a sympathy such as M.
Gardon's large mind enable him to bestow, where his brethren had been
incapable of comprehending that a man could sincerely doubt between them
and Rome. When the history was finished, Eustacie exclaimed, turning
to Maitre Gardon, 'Ah! sir, is not this just what we sought? If this
gentleman would but convey a letter to my mother-in-law---'

M. Gardon smiled. 'Scotland and England are by no means the same place,
Lady,' he said.

'Whatever this lady would command, wherever she would send me, I am at
her service,' cried the Abbe, fervently.

And, after a little further debate, it was decided that it might really
be the best course, for him as for Madame de Ribaumont, to become the
bearer of a letter and token from her, entreating her mother-in-law to
notify her pleasure whether she should bring her child to England. She
had means enough to advance a sufficient sum to pay Mericour's passage,
and he accepted it most punctiliously as a loan, intending, so soon as
her despatches were ready, to go on to La Rochelle, and make inquiry for
a ship.

Chance, however, seemed unusually propitious, for the next day there
was an apparition in the streets of La Sablerie of four or five
weather-beaten, rollicking-looking men, their dress profusely adorned
with ribbons, and their language full of strange oaths. They were well
known at La Sablerie as sailors belonging to a ship of the fleet of the
Count de Montgomery, the unfortunate knight whose lance had caused the
death of King Henry II., and who, proscribed by the mortal hatred of
Catherine de Medicis, had become the admiral of a piratical fleet in the
Calvinist interest, so far winked at the Queen Elizabeth that it had its
head-quarters in the Channel Islands, and thence was a most formidable
foe to merchant vessels on the northern and eastern coasts of France;
and often indulged in descents on the coast, when the sailors--being in
general the scum of the nation--were apt to comport themselves more like
American buccaneers than like champions of any form of religion.

La Sablerie was a Huguenot town, so they used no violence, but only
swaggered about, demanding from Bailli La Grasse, in the name of their
gallant Captain Latouche, contributions and provisions, and giving him
to understand that if he