hope from the moment she saw him. She instinctively felt that to sue for mercy from such a monster would be worse than vain. She had lost hope utterly. She and her mother had been mistaken. The saints cared for neither little Pierre nor herself, and had left them to fall into the clutches of this demon. She glanced slowly around the room in the faint hope of escape, or even for the chance of throwing herself from a window, if it were needful, in order to escape from that horrible man. But the walls were thick. No light came from without, but only from a great furnace, that was Strangely constructed and made her shudder. For a long time there was perfect silence in the dreadful place. The two masked men, grotesque and horrible, stood near the furnace, motionless as statues. The sable monster on his black throne watched them without moving a muscle in his great, coarse face, only his small eyes seemed like two scintillating sparks of infernal fire, as with a fiendish kind of pleasure he marked the agony of Ninon. Although the young girl instinctively gave up all hope of life, yet never had life seemed so sweet. Its homeliest details now appeared precious, and their poor little cottage, heaven, compared with this den of infamy. She had just tasted the exquisite happiness of a new and before unknown love, and now she was to die. She thought of her mother growing gray in loneliness and grief. She thought of her lover coming eagerly to their trysting-place; but when he should come on the morrow, Christmas day, what would she be?--where would she be? and in her anguish she cried aloud, and, kneeling, stretched out her hands towards the sable throne. "Then for the first time the coarse, thick lips of the monster distorted themselves into a hideous grin, but otherwise he did not move, and the awful silence continued in that chamber of death. "Ninon put her hands to her face, to hide his ugly visage, and then sank down in the apathy of despair. "There was nothing in Ninon's agony that disturbed Laval. Scarcely a night passed but some victim like herself writhed under his remorseless eyes. Their mortal fear and sufferings were his recreation before the sterner business of sorcery that followed; and the more demonstrative they were in their pain, the more highly spiced was his pleasure. At first Ninon's beautiful and expressive face kept his whole attention; but after a time he began to note the strange-appearing little boy who accompanied her. There was no fear in his calm, pale face. There was no dread in his large, spiritual eyes, that seemed to look past the monster and his thick walls to some rare vision beyond. "'What does the little wretch see?' he queried, for Laval, like his age, was very superstitious. "But Ninon must be goaded out of her apathy, or the night would be dull; so at last the thick lips open, and the awful silence is broken by more awful words: "'Girl, thou who art to lose body and soul, look at me.'