how can I swear this?" cried Duhamel impatiently.

"Why, easily enough," put in the stranger. "Let me take him in my
berline. I can leave him at Amiens or at Beauvais, or any one of the
convenient places that I pass. Or I can even carry him on to Paris with
me."

"You are very good, Maximilien," answered the old man, to which the
other returned a gesture of deprecation.

In this fashion, then, was the matter settled to the satisfaction of the
Seigneur's retainers, and upon having received Duhamel's solemn promise
that Caron should be carried out of Bellecour, and, for that matter, out
of Picardy, before the night was spent, they withdrew.

Within the schoolmaster's study he whom Duhamel called Maximilien strode
to and fro, his hands clasped behind his back, his head bent, his chin
thrust forward, denouncing the seigneurial system, of whose atrocity he
had received that evening instances enough--for he had heard the whole
story of La Boulaye's rebellion against the power of Bellecour and the
causes that had led to it.

"We will mend all this, I promise you, Duhamel," he was repeating. "But
not until we have united to shield the weak from oppression, to restrain
the arrogant and to secure to each the possession of what belongs to
him; not until all men are free and started upon equal terms in the race
of life; not until we shall have set up rules of justice and of peace,
to which all--rich and poor, noble and simple alike--shall be obliged
to conform. Thus only can we repair the evil done by the caprice of
fortune, which causes the one to be born into silk and the other into
fustian. We must subject the weak and the mighty alike to mutual
duties, collecting our forces into the supreme power to govern us
all impartially by the same laws, to protect alike all members of the
community, to repel our common foes and preserve us in never-ending
concord. How many crimes, murders, wars, miseries, horrors shall thus be
spared us, Duhamel? And it will come; it will come soon, never fear."

Caron stirred on the couch where Duhamel was tending him, and raised his
head to glance at the man who was voicing the doctrines that for years
had dwelt in his heart.

"Dear Jean Jacques," he murmured.

The stranger turned sharply and stepped to the young man's side.

"You have read the master?" he inquired, with a sudden, new-born
interest in the secretary.

"Read him?" cried Carom forgetting for the moment the sore condition of
his