ur might
at once be dispatched.

'Is she there whom they call the Lady of Hope?' asked one of the
soldiers, a mercenary, less interested than most of his comrades, as he
had only a fortnight since transferred his services from Guise to Quinet.

'Our Lady of Sadness just now,' replied the messenger; 'her old father
is at the point of death. However, she is there, and at our last siege
twenty wine-skins would not so well have kept up men's hearts.'

'And the little one, the white fairy, is she there too? They say 'tis
a spirit, a changeling that could not brook the inside of a church, but
flew out of the Moustier at Montauban like a white swan, in the middle
of a sermon.'

'I only know I've seen her sleep like a dormouse through prayers,
sermon, and all at Pont de Dronne. _Follette_ is she be, she belongs to
the white elves of the moonlight.'

'Well, they say bullets won't touch her, and no place can be taken where
she is,' replied the trooper. 'Nay, that Italian pedlar rogue, the same
that the Duke has since hung, has sold to long Gilles and snub-nosed
Pierre silver bullets, wherewith they have sworn to shoot the one or the
other next time they had a chance.'

These words were spoken at not great distance from Berenger, but passed
by him as mere men-at-arms' gossip, in his eagerness to expedite the
start of his party; and in less than an hour they were _en route_ for
Pont de Dronne; but hasten as he would, it was not till near noon the
next day that he came in sight of a valley, through which wound a river,
crossed by a high-backed bridge, with a tall pointed arch in the middle,
and a very small one on either side. An old building of red stone,
looking like what it was--a monastery converted into a fortress--stood
on the nearer, or northern bank, and on the belfry tower waved a flag
with the arms of Quinet. Higher up the valley, there was an ominous
hum, and clouds of smoke and dust; and the _gen d'armes_, who knew
the country, rejoiced that they were come just in time, and exchanged
anxious questions whether the enemy were not fording the river above
them, so as to attack not only the fortress on this northern side, but
the bridge tower on the southern bank of the river.

Spurring down the hill, the party were admitted, at the well-guarded
gateway, into a large thickly-walled yard, where the soldiers and
horses remained, and Berenger and Philip, passing through a small arched
doorway into the body of the old mon