of their retainers. Yes; I had it now. This child was the
daughter of some custodian of the demesne before me.

Suddenly, as she stood there in the moonlight, a song, sung at
half-voice, floated down on the calm air. It was a ditty of old
Provence, a melody I knew and loved, and if aught had been wanting to
heighten the enchantment that already ravished me, that soft melodious
voice had done it. Singing still, she turned and reentered the room,
leaving wide the windows, so that faintly, as from a distance, her voice
still reached me after she was gone from sight.

It was in that hour that it came to me to cast myself upon this fair
creature's mercy. Surely one so sweet and saintly to behold would take
compassion on an unfortunate! Haply my wound and all the rest that I had
that night endured made me dull-witted and warped my reason.

With what strength I still possessed I went to work to scale her
balcony. The task was easy even for one in my spent condition. The
wall was thick with ivy, and, moreover, a window beneath afforded some
support, for by standing on the heavy coping I could with my fingers
touch the sill of the balcony above. Thus I hoisted myself, and
presently I threw an arm over the parapet. Already I was astride of that
same Parapet before she became aware of my presence.

The song died suddenly on her lips, and her eyes, blue as
forget-me-nots, were wide now with the fear that the sight of me
occasioned. Another second and there had been an outcry that would have
brought the house about our ears, when, stepping to the threshold of the
room, "Mademoiselle," I entreated, "for the love of God, be silent! I
mean you no harm. I am a fugitive. I am pursued."

This was no considered speech. There had been no preparing of words; I
had uttered them mechanically almost--perhaps by inspiration, for they
were surely the best calculated to enlist this lady's sympathy. And so
far as went the words themselves, they were rigorously true.

With eyes wide open still, she confronted me, and I now observed that
she was not so tall as from below I had imagined. She was, in fact, of a
short stature rather, but of proportions so exquisite that she conveyed
an impression of some height. In her hand she held a taper by whose
light she had been surveying herself in her mirror at the moment of
my advent. Her unbound hair of brown fell like a mantle about her
shoulders, and this fact it was drew me to notice that she was in
h