f the mayor
during those sombre days of waiting, Admiral de Saint Vilquier did not
condole with the anxious husband on the fact that he could not yet leave
Falaise for Mantua.

V

Jacques de Wissant woke with a start and sat up in bed. He had heard a
knock--but, awake or sleeping, his ears were never free of the sound of
knocking,--of muffled, regular knocking....

It was the darkest hour of the summer night, but with a sharp sense of
relief he became aware that what had wakened him this time was a real
sound, not the slow, patient, rhythmical, tapping which haunted him
incessantly. But now the knocking had been followed by the opening of
his bedroom door, and vaguely outlined before him was the short, squat
form of an old woman who had entered his mother's service when he was a
little boy, and who always stayed in his town house.

"M'sieur l'Amiral de Saint Vilquier desires to see M'sieur Jacques on
urgent business," she whispered. "I have put him to wait in the great
drawing-room. It is fortunate that I took all the covers off the
furniture yesterday."

Then the moment of ordeal, the moment he had begun to think would never
come--was upon him? He knew this summons to mean that the _Neptune_ had
been finally towed into the harbour, and that now, in this still, dark
hour before dawn, was about to begin the work of taking out the bodies.

Every day for a week past it had been publicly announced that the
following night would see the final scene of the dread drama, and each
evening--even last evening--it had been as publicly announced that
nothing could be done for the present.

Jacques de Wissant had put all his trust in the Admiral and in the
arrangements the Admiral was making to avoid discovery. But now, as he
got up and dressed himself--strange to say that phantom sound of
knocking had ceased--there came over him a frightful sensation of doubt
and fear. Had he been right to trust wholly to the old naval officer?
Would it not have been better to have taken the Minister of Marine into
his confidence?

How would it be possible for Admiral de Saint Vilquier, unless backed by
Governmental authority, to elude the vigilance, not only of the
Admiralty officials and of all those that were directly interested, but
also of the journalists who, however much the public interest had
slackened in the disaster, still stayed on at Falaise in order to be
present at the last act of the tragedy?

These thoughts jostled eac