e had never entered it! Your money will be safe with me, and they
will never think of looking for it here. Will you give it me?"

In answer to her pleadings, a shabby little leather book was pushed into
her room. As she picked it up and proceeded to hide it securely away
beneath the baby's many wrappings, the pedlar said, in a voice rendered
hoarse and indistinct by the spirits he had partaken of in such
unaccustomed quantities: "Here, my dear, take it. It will, I know, be
safe with you. I feel so tired that I don't think a cannon would wake me
to-night once I get to sleep." He groped his way to his bed, and flung
himself down on it, dressed as he was. Soon Babette heard him snoring
loudly and regularly, and then she took off her clothes, and rolling her
cloak around her, lay down by the side of her child.

In after years, when she looked on that awful time, she often wondered
how, feeling as she did that she was surrounded by so many unknown
perils, she had ever closed her eyes. Perhaps the long walk and the
excitement she had undergone accounted for the profound sleep into which
she fell almost immediately, and from which she was aroused in the dead
of night by a noise in the next room. It was neither snore nor cry. It
was more like a long, shuddering gurgle, and then--silence! Frightful,
terrible silence, broken at last by the sound of stealthy footsteps and
hushed voices. Babette sunk down on her pillow again, her baby clutched
in her arms. A voiceless prayer went up to Heaven for the child's safety
and her own, for already she heard them approaching her door, and made
sure her last hour was come. Through nearly closed eyelids she watched
two of the men enter; the one who had brought them to the house and his
elder brother. They were muttering curses, low but deep.

"To have risked so much for nothing!" whispered one. "Can she have it,
or was the old fool jesting with us?"

"It's a jest that has cost him dear," answered the other, as he watched
his brother search the girl's clothes and then slip his murderous hands
beneath her pillow. He withdrew them empty.

"Shall we settle her?" he asked, "or let her go? Is it not best to be
on the safe side?"

But the smooth-shaven one said, decisively: "Let her alone; we have
enough to answer for. See, she is sound asleep, and if not, it will be
easy to find out before she reaches Brussels how much she knows. Let
her be."

Babette lay like a log, stirring neither hand no