“Louis, will you never learn respect for your elders and betters?” asked M. des Graves, laughing. “But seriously, Gilbert, without adopting Louis’ interpretation, there was a difference of opinion, was there not, about the method of attack?” The Marquis nodded. “Lescure wanted an attack _en échelon_. The others objected, because our men are not sufficiently trained. But undoubtedly, having regard to the position of Luçon, his theory is sound, and he got his way in the end.” “Well, we shall know the result to-morrow,” said M. des Graves. And there was a silence, broken only by Louis’ whispered endearments to his dog. The priest’s heart was very full. Most overwhelming of all at that hour was the sensation of the falteringness of his own faith. There had been little room for hope in his mind on that memorable night when, driven by a force outside himself, and knowing more real fear than ever in his life, he had broken his long silence, and had called up, to encounter Gilbert, all the awful sanctions that sustain the priestly office. And the tenuity of his hope was made yet more plain to him when God had so amazingly and so speedily answered his faithless prayers, when, himself humbled to the dust, he had fallen in adoration before the spectacle of that most stupendous of conquests, the victory of the Divine over the human will. Then indeed he had been filled with hope—with violent hope—that the rest would follow, not because Gilbert had done right in giving up Lucienne, but because he had renounced with her something immeasurably more significant. But the immediate effect of his renunciation seemed to have been to make Gilbert harder than before. Then had come a period so full of the whirling activities of war that his glimpses of the Marquis had been necessarily fragmentary. Yet there was one sign which, after he joined the army at the Four Roads, gradually impressed itself upon M. des Graves. Gilbert’s men—most of them, too, his own peasantry among whom he had always lived—were beginning to manifest for him feelings of a much warmer sort than mere respect. The growth of these indications M. des Graves observed; it was all that he could do, for to him Gilbert vouchsafed not a word, not a clue. And so that evening in the church, the hour of the supremest happiness that he had ever known, had swept upon him unprepared. Yet, sudden as Gilbert’s surrender seemed, it had brought with it its own justification, for the priest had learnt then that the growth of his soul had been as natural as that which precedes the birth of all living things. Only the time had been short—as men count time. But the accompaniments of life had been beyond the ordinary, and the stress of war, the daily perils, the spectacle of the faith which inspired the humble to fight and taught them how to die had ripened to an early unfolding the seed which had never room to grow until, in that bitter conflict, Gilbert