in the judges.
They looked at each other in surprise, for it was apparent they did not
expect these touches of human feeling in a man who lived, as it were, in
constant warfare with his fellow-creatures.

"Thou hast reason," returned the chatelain, recovering his gravity; "for
she is said to be both dutiful and comely. Thou wert about to marry this
daughter?"

Balthazar acknowledged the truth of this by another inclination.

"Didst thou ever know a Vevaisan of the name of Jacques Colis?"

"Mein Herr, I did. He was to have become my son."

The chatelain was again surprised; for the steadiness of the reply denoted
innocence, and he studied the countenance of the prisoner intently. He
found apparent frankness where he had expected to meet with subterfuge,
and, like all who have great acquaintance with crime, his distrust
increased. The simplicity of one who really had nothing to conceal, unlike
that appearance of firmness, which is assumed to affect innocence, set his
shrewdness at fault, though familiar with most of he expedients of the
guilty.

"This Jacques Colis was to have wived thy daughter?" continued the
chatelain, growing more wary as he thought he detected greater evidence of
art in the accused.

"It was so understood between us."

"Did he love thy child?"

The muscles of Balthazar's mouth played convulsively, the twitching of
the lip seeming to threaten a loss of self-command.

"Mein Herr, I believed it."

"Yet he refused to fulfil the engagement?"

"He did."

Even Marguerite was alarmed at the deep emphasis with which this answer
was given, and, for the first time in her life, she trembled lest the
accumulating load of obloquy had indeed been too strong for her husband's
principles.

"Thou felt anger at his conduct, and at the public manner in which he
disgraced thee and thine?"

"Herr Chatelain, I am human. When Jacques Colis repudiated my daughter, he
bruised a tender plant in the girl, and he caused bitterness in a father's
heart."

"Thou hast received instruction superior to thy condition, Balthazar!"

"We are a race of executioners, but we are not the unnurtured herd that
people fancy. 'Tis the will of Berne that made me what I am, and no desire
nor wants of my own."

"The charge is honorable, as are all that come of the state," repeated the
other, with the formal readiness in which set phrases are uttered; "the
charge is honorable for one of thy birth. God assigns to each his stat