you awaken,
when Michelot shall tell you all that took place."

She held a glass to my lips from which I drank gratefully, then, with
the submissiveness of a babe, I obeyed her and slept.

As she had promised, it was Michelot who greeted me when next I opened
my eyes, on the following day. There were tears in his eyes--eyes that
had looked grim and unmoved upon the horrors of the battlefield.

From him I learned how, after they had flung me into the river, deeming
me dead already, St. Auban and his men had made off. The swift stream
swirled me along towards the spot where, in the boat, Michelot awaited
my return all unconscious of what was taking place. He had heard the
splash, and had suddenly stood up, on the point of going ashore, when
my body rose within a few feet of him. He spoke of the agony of mind
wherewith he had suddenly stretched forth and clutched me by my doublet,
fearing that I was indeed dead. He had lifted me into the boat to find
that my heart still beat and that the blood flowed from my wounds. These
he had there and then bound up in the only rude fashion he was master
of, and forthwith, thinking of Andrea and the Chevalier de Canaples,
who were my friends, and of Mademoiselle, who was my debtor, also seeing
that the chateau was the nearest place, he had rowed straight across to
Canaples, and there I had lain during the four weeks that had elapsed,
nursed by Mademoiselle, Andrea, and himself, and thus won back to life.

Ah, Dieu! How good it was to know that someone there was still who cared
for worthless Gaston de Luynes a little--enough to watch beside him and
withhold his soul from the grim claws of Death.

"What of M. de St. Auban?" I inquired presently.

"He has not been seen since that night. Probably he feared that did he
come to Blois, the Chevalier would find means of punishing him for the
attempted abduction of Mademoiselle."

"Ah, then Andrea is safe?"

As if in answer to my question, the lad entered at that moment, and upon
seeing me sitting up, talking to Michelot, he uttered an exclamation of
joy, and hurried forward to my bedside.

"Gaston, dear friend!" he cried, as he took my hand--and a thin,
withered hand it was.

We talked long together,--we three,--and anon we were joined by the
Chevalier de Canaples, who offered me also, in his hesitating manner,
his felicitations. And with me they lingered until Yvonne came to drive
them with protestations from my bedside.

Such, in