she had put his courage, and the failure of that courage
to stand the test. Yet it was this, though he had himself provoked the
trial, which burned up his chivalry, as the smuggler's fire burns up the
dwarf heath upon the Landes. It was the discovery that in an heroic hour
he was no hero that gave force to his passionate gesture, and next moment
sent him storming down the beetling passage to the Rue du Roule, his
heart a maelstrom of fierce vows and fiercer menaces.

He had reached the further end of the alley and was on the point of
entering the street before he remembered that he had nowhere to go. His
lodgings were no longer his, since his landlord knew him to be a
Huguenot, and would doubtless betray him. To approach those of his faith
whom he had frequented was to expose them to danger; and, beyond the
religion, he had few acquaintances and those of the newest. Yet the
streets were impossible. He walked them on the utmost edge of peril; he
lurked in them under the blade of an impending axe. And, whether he
walked or lurked, he went at the mercy of the first comers bold enough to
take his life.

The sweat stood on his brow as he paused under the low arch of the alley-
end, tasting the bitter forlornness of the dog banned and set for death
in that sunlit city. In every window of the gable end which faced his
hiding-place he fancied an eye watching his movements; in every distant
step he heard the footfall of doom coming that way to his discovery. And
while he trembled, he had to reflect, to think, to form some plan.

In the town was no place for him, and short of the open country no
safety. And how could he gain the open country? If he succeeded in
reaching one of the gates--St. Antoine, or St. Denis, in itself a task of
difficulty--it would only be to find the gate closed, and the guard on
the alert. At last it flashed on him that he might cross the river; and
at the notion hope awoke. It was possible that the massacre had not
extended to the southern suburb; possible, that if it had, the Huguenots
who lay there--Frontenay, and Montgomery, and Chartres, with the men of
the North--might be strong enough to check it, and even to turn the
tables on the Parisians.

His colour returned. He was no coward, as soldiers go; if it came to
fighting he had courage enough. He could not hope to cross the river by
the bridge, for there, where the goldsmiths lived, the mob were like to
be most busy. But if he co