Quite undaunted by her reproaches, M. le Chevalier listened to her passionate praise of his quondam comrade with sparkling eyes, and threw up his hands in ecstatic assent. "Brave, did mademoiselle say?" he echoed; "_mon Dieu!_ he was gallant, gay, free-hearted, _helas!_ that the ladies should love such an Apollo." "And you betrayed him, knowing him to be all this?" she cried, bitterly. "_Par la messe!_ mademoiselle is not just!" complained the chevalier, with tears in his eyes. "I love _mon_ colonel, admire, believe in him; I spit upon Monsieur Mortlake--laugh at, revile him! Mademoiselle must have found out that I obeyed him--never; that I stuck to my colonel only because I love him; and that I left him not until fortune beckoned me away. If he had given me his dear company when I fled to Richmond, he would not have been to-day where he is; but would he? not though I prayed to him with tears in the eyes, with grief in the heart. No, no, he was doomed; he would stay with the Yankees, and--Thoms!" "Did you not suspect who Thoms was, especially as Mortlake sent him to you?" "Oh! I was blind. I was bewitched; the wretch was too cunning, mademoiselle. But pray, what has all the cunning ended in? Bah! simplicity, honesty for me; I still live, and walk abroad, a free man. But I am a Chevalier of honor. I scorn a crooked policy. When for the second time the South won Calembours, I found that perfidious fortune had changed her mood; from filling my pockets with gold as commissary general, she descended to thrusting me into that unwholesome residence in Richmond, Castle Thunder. All because some head of wood suggested that the Chevalier de Calembours was selling the North to the South, and _vice versa_. But the chevalier is a Knight of Industry as well as of Honor--he ever makes the honey where other bees would but starved carcasses. I make the situation palatable even in Castle Thunder, for there is a blue-coated soldier with me there. He is wounded, I nurse him; he is hungry, I feed him from my wretched pittance; we mingle our tears over the moldy crust and the muddy water--we console each other. "When he is able to crawl, I file off his chains; together we dig our tunnel through the dungeon floor. We have no tools but we use a broken plate and a rusty key, and--patience. Night and day, mademoiselle, night and day that invalid soldier and I gnaw through the baked earth; the nails are torn from the fingers; see, _ma chère!_ the clothes are worn from the bodies; _mon camerade_ faints often, almost dies; but one day we see the sunny earth come crumbling into our rat-hole. _Mon Dieu!_ we have penetrated beneath the wall--we are free.