'Who is there?' 'Le Rossignol.' 'What are you doing?'
'Looking: for my swan's yoke.' Then he laughs--little knowing how I
meant to serve his officer. The Hollandais mummy hath been of more use
to me than trinkets. I frightened her highness with it, and now it is
set to torment the Swiss. Let me tell thee, Shubenacadie: punishment
comes even on a swan who would stretch up his neck and stand taller than
his mistress. Wert thou not blown up with the oven? Hide thy head and
take warning."

XIV.

THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN POWERS.

The dwarf's report about Klussman forced Madame La Tour to watch the
strange girl; but Marguerite seemed to take no notice of any soldier who
came and went in the hall. As for the Swiss, he carried trouble on his
self-revealing face, but not treachery. Klussman camped at night on the
floor with other soldiers off guard; screens and the tall settles being
placed in a row between this military bivouac and women and children of
the household protected near the stairs. He awoke as often as the guard
was changed, and when dawn-light instead of moonlight appeared with the
last relief, he sprang up, and took the breastplate which had been laid
aside for his better rest. Out of its hollow fell Jonas Bronck's hand,
bare and crouching with stiff fingers on the pavement. The soldiers
about to lie down laughed at themselves and Klussman for recoiling from
it, and fury succeeded pallor in his blond face.

"Did you do that?" he demanded of the men, but before they could utter
denials, his suspicion leaped the settles. Spurning Jonas Bronck's
treasured fragment with his boot in a manner which Antonia could never
have forgiven, Klussman sent it to the hearth and strode after it. He
had not far to look for Marguerite. As his eye traveled recklessly into
the women's camp, he encountered her beside him, sitting on the floor
behind a settle and matching the red of a burning tree trunk with the
red of her bruised eyelids.

"Did you put that in my breastplate?" said Klussman, pointing to the
hand as it lay palm upwards. Marguerite shuddered and burst out crying.
This had been her employment much of the night, but the nervous fit of
childish weeping swept away all of Klussman's self-control.

"No; no;" she repeated. "You think I do everything that is horrible."
And she sobbed upon her hands.

Klussman stooped down and tossed the hand like an escaped coal behind
the log. As he stooped he said,--

"I don't th