The man came nearer to her. She was standing on a step below him and the light from a hanging lamp in the room behind him fell full upon her face. He looked at her keenly for a few seconds, then he replied curtly: "Yes. I know you! What do you want?" "To speak with you, Leroux," she said. "I have a message for you from Madame la Marquise de Mortain. Let me in." "Madame la Marquise chooses her messenger strangely," he retorted sullenly, "at this hour of the night." "No one else was willing to affront the coming storm. Our servants are cowards. Let me in, Leroux." Leroux made no immediate reply. He looked over his shoulder into the interior of the room, apparently with a view to taking counsel with his mates. Fernande, with her hood and cloak drawn closely round her, waited on the doorstep. That moment a vivid flash of lightning rent the heavy bank of clouds in the east, and a clap of thunder rolled echoing above the hills. She suppressed an involuntary cry of terror, but she called out more insistently: "Let me in, Leroux. 'Tis a matter of life and death." But Leroux did not stand aside; instead of this, he stepped over the threshold, and as Fernande instinctively retreated, he came down the steps, and then he closed the door behind him. "Let me in, Leroux," she said more peremptorily. "I cannot speak with you out here." "Why not?" he retorted. "I have no secrets that the night birds may not hear." IV Every time that he spoke Leroux came a step or two nearer to her, and every time she retreated as far away from him as she dared, without arousing his resentment and causing him to turn sullenly from her and refuse to listen to what she had come to say. Thus he had forced her as far back as the circle of light which came from the clock-tower. Here he paused and looked her up and down with every mark of surliness and insolence imprinted upon his face. "Now what is it?" he queried roughly. "And be quick about it. There's men's work to be done here to-night. 'Tis not a place for women." "I know that," replied Fernande boldly; "the work that I am doing now is really men's work. It is nearly four kilometres from La Frontenay, and I have walked all the way. The storm will be at its height ere I can get home again. Think you I would have come, had it not been a matter of life and death?"