re beyond sight of the gate our pace was slackened,
and, now that all immediate danger of discovery for Margaret was
at an end, I fell to wondering at the extraordinary chance which
again brought me face to face with her who had proved the
turning-point in my life. Little by little I pieced out the puzzle,
and the more I brought it together, the more I wondered, but in a
vague, disjointed fashion, that led to no solution. My confused
thoughts were interrupted by our party halting in front of the
Convent of the Ursulines, where, to my relief, I saw the sergeant
lead Margaret round towards the side entrance.

"May I ask where you are taking us?" I said, when we again began
our march, putting the question more to set my mind working again
than out of curiosity.

"Where else would we be going but to the General?"

"And where has he found quarters in this stone heap? You have made
a fine mess of things with your battering," I said, for the evidence
of their fire on the town was surprising.

"Have we not!" he exclaimed, with true soldierly pride. "But there
will be a corner or two, here and there, that was out of our reach.
It was a God's mercy for ourselves that we didn't have our will of
the whole town, or there's many a poor fellow would have made a
bad winter of it."

"I dare say you found it bad enough as it was, eh, Neil?"

"You may say that, sir! There's been a deal to put up with for both
high and low. But here we will be at the General's."

As he spake we drew up before a house in the rue St. Louis, and
were ushered into an anteroom, where we were left under guard,
while our conductor departed to make his report.

I was not permitted to speak with my fellow-prisoner, and so went
back to my wonderings. It was Margaret--that is, Mme. de St.
Just--who had befriended Lucy on shipboard, and protected her since.
What a marvellous happening, that these two women, of all others
in the world, should have thus been thrown together! That she now
knew of my relation towards Lucy I could not doubt; and though I
had preferred it might have come about otherwise, I bitterly
reflected that an estimate of my character was no longer of supreme
importance to her, now she was a married woman. Though I had been
doing my utmost all these years of exile to school myself to a
frame of mind in which I might look upon her as unapproachable for
me, now that I found an insurmountable barrier existed, not of my
own raising, with the in