r,
hearing its struggles and perils.

I shall ask my readers to recall to memory all they can of Gerard's
journey with Denys, and in their mind's eye to see those very matters
told by his comrade to an exile's father, all stoic outside, all father
within, and to two poor women, an exile's mother and a sister, who were
all love and pity and tender anxiety both outside and in. Now would you
mind closing this book for a minute and making an effort to realize all
this? It will save us so much repetition.

Then you will not be surprised when I tell you that after a while Giles
came softly and curled himself up before the fire, and lay gazing at the
speaker with a reverence almost canine; and that, when the rough soldier
had unconsciously but thoroughly betrayed his better qualities, and
above all his rare affection for Gerard, Kate, though timorous as a
bird, stole her little hand into the warrior's huge brown palm, where
it lay an instant like a tea-spoonful of cream spilt on a platter, then
nipped the ball of his thumb and served for a Kardiometer. In other
words, Fate is just even to rival storytellers, and balances matters.
Denys had to pay a tax to his audience which I have not. Whenever Gerard
was in too much danger, the female faces became so white, and their poor
little throats gurgled so, he was obliged in common humanity to
spoil his recital. Suspense is the soul of narrative, and thus dealt
Rough-and-Tender of Burgundy with his best suspenses. "Now, dame, take
not on till ye hear the end; ma'amselle, let not your cheek blanch so;
courage! it looks ugly; but you shall hear how we won through. Had he
miscarried, and I at hand, would I be alive?"

And meantime Kate's little Kardiometer, or heart-measurer, graduated
emotion, and pinched by scale. At its best it was by no means a
high-pressure engine. But all is relative. Denys soon learned the tender
gamut; and when to water the suspense, and extract the thrill as far as
possible. On one occasion only he cannily indemnified his narrative for
this drawback. Falling personally into the Rhine, and sinking, he got
pinched, he Denys, to his surprise and satisfaction. "Oho!" thought he,
and on the principle of the anatomists, "experimentum in corpore vili,"
kept himself a quarter of an hour under water; under pressure all the
time. And even when Gerard had got hold of him, he was loth to leave the
river, so, less conscientious than I was, swam with Gerard to the east
b