d is in the
prison; and you know what that means!"

"Father arrested!" Jean exclaimed; "on what grounds? He never
expressed an opinion as to public affairs. That at heart he hated
what has been going on, I know; but he never spoke strongly, even
to me, and when I have heard his opinion asked, he has always
replied that he was a trader, and that a man could not give his
attention to business if he worried himself over politics. He
attended to his trade, and left it to those who liked, to manage
the government of the country.

"What of my mother and sister?"

"They are safe, monsieur. He sent them off a fortnight before, in
disguise, to La Rochelle; at least, so I have heard from the
fishermen. And as the Henriette was lying there at the time, and
sailed two days after, there is not much doubt but that they sailed
in her for England.

"Your father was denounced before the committee of public safety as
one who was hostile to the Convention. He was accused of having
sent large sums of money to England, and was believed to have sent
his wife and daughter there also, with the intention, of course, of
following them; and the fact that you were known to be fighting in
the ranks of the brigands, as they call the Vendeans, was also
mentioned as an additional crime on his part."

"Then we have a double task to carry out, Leigh," Jean said grimly.

"Now I will tell you what we came here for, Brenon. Six days ago a
small party of the Blue cavalry came, at night, to my chateau. I
was away, but they carried off my wife as a prisoner, and burnt the
house to the ground. So we have come here to see if we cannot get
her out of prison.''

"You have thought of such a thing as that?" the man exclaimed in
surprise. "Ah, monsieur! It is well nigh an impossibility that you
have undertaken. The villains know that there are hundreds of men,
friends of the prisoners with whom they have crowded the jails, who
would tear them down stone by stone, if they had the power; but in
addition to the prison warders--not the men that used to be there,
but men taken from the lowest class in the town--the prisons are
watched by what they call the volunteers, fifteen hundred men
belonging to the scum of the city--the men from the slaughterhouses,
the skinners', and the tan yards Some of these are ever on guard
round the prisons, night and day.

"There have been great changes here. A year ago, almost everyone
thought that the Assembly was going to do