ht might
sometimes enter but fresh air never, he opened a door, and Sainte-Croix
had no sooner entered than he heard it locked behind him.

At the grating of the lock he turned. The gaoler had left him with no
light but the rays of the moon, which, shining through a barred window
some eight or ten feet from the ground, shed a gleam upon a miserable
truckle-bed and left the rest of the room in deep obscurity. The
prisoner stood still for a moment and listened; then, when he had heard
the steps die away in the distance and knew himself to be alone at last,
he fell upon the bed with a cry more like the roaring of a wild beast
than any human sound: he cursed his fellow-man who had snatched him from
his joyous life to plunge him into a dungeon; he cursed his God who had
let this happen; he cried aloud to whatever powers might be that could
grant him revenge and liberty.

Just at that moment, as though summoned by these words from the bowels of
the earth, a man slowly stepped into the circle of blue light that fell
from the window-a man thin and pale, a man with long hair, in a black
doublet, who approached the foot of the bed where Sainte-Croix lay.
Brave as he was, this apparition so fully answered to his prayers (and at
the period the power of incantation and magic was still believed in) that
he felt no doubt that the arch-enemy of the human race, who is
continually at hand, had heard him and had now come in answer to his
prayers. He sat up on the bed, feeling mechanically at the place where
the handle of his sword would have been but two hours since, feeling his
hair stand on end, and a cold sweat began to stream down his face as the
strange fantastic being step by step approached him. At length the
apparition paused, the prisoner and he stood face to face for a moment,
their eyes riveted; then the mysterious stranger spoke in gloomy tones.

"Young man," said he, "you have prayed to the devil for vengeance on the
men who have taken you, for help against the God who has abandoned you.
I have the means, and I am here to proffer it. Have you the courage to
accept?"

"First of all," asked Sainte-Croix; "who are you?"

"Why seek you to know who I am," replied the unknown, "at the very moment
when I come at your call, and bring what you desire?"

"All the same," said Sainte-Croix, still attributing what he heard to a
supernatural being, "when one makes a compact of this kind, one prefers
to know with whom one is trea