be tired."

Had he seen the tears rolling down her face as she sat there? If so he
gave no sign. Quietly he busied himself with his preparations, and before
he came back to her, she had wiped them away.

He waited upon her with womanly gentleness, and later he went with her to
the hotel at which Piers usually stayed, and saw her established there
for the night.

It was not till the moment of parting that she found any words in which
to express herself.

Then, with her hand in his, she whispered chokingly, "I feel as if--as
if--I had failed him--just when he needed me most. He was in prison,
and--I left him there."

Crowther's steady eyes looked into hers with kindness that was full of
sustaining comfort. "He has broken out of his prison," he said. "Don't
fret--don't fret!"

Her lips were quivering painfully. She turned her face aside. "He will
scarcely need me now," she said.

"Write and ask him!" said Crowther gently.

She made a piteous gesture of hopelessness. "I have got to find my own
place of repentance first," she said.

"It shouldn't wait," said Crowther. "Write tonight!"

And so for half the night Avery sat writing a letter to her husband which
he was destined never to receive.

CHAPTER VIII

THE RELEASE OF THE PRISONER

How long was it since the fight round the chateau? Piers had no idea. The
damp chill of the autumn night was upon him and he was cold to the bone.

It had been a desperate fight in which quarter had been neither asked nor
given, hand to hand and face to face, with wild oaths and dreadful
laughter. He had not noticed the tumult at the time, but the echoes of it
still rang in his ears. A desperate fight against overwhelming odds! For
the chateau had been strongly held, and the struggle for it had seemed
Titanic, albeit only a detail of a rearguard action. There had been guns
there that had harried them all the previous day. It had become a matter
of necessity to silence those guns. So the effort had been made, a
glorious effort crowned with success. They had mastered the garrison,
they had silenced the guns; and then, within an hour of their victory,
disaster had come upon them. Great numbers of the enemy had swept
suddenly upon them, had surrounded them and swallowed them up.

It was all over now. The tide of battle had swept on. The place was
silent as the grave. He was the only man left, flung as it were upon a
dust-heap in a corner of the world that had ceased to mat