The hall was lighted by three large sconces hung against that part of the wall nearest to the table; but still the extent of the chamber rendered the light feeble, except immediately under the burners. It cannot be said that the appearance of Edward Langdale and his companions was very prepossessing. Edward himself wore his hat and plume, which had been thrown off before he plunged into the water; but his dress was soiled as well as wet. The stranger whom he had saved was in a still worse plight: his hat, of course, had been lost in his struggle with the torrent, and his forehead and part of his face were covered with dripping locks of long black hair. His sword, which had remained in the sheath, was the only distinguishing mark of a gentleman about him. Pierrot and Jacques Beaupré looked far more like bravos than the followers of an English gentleman of those days; and the two ill-favored blacksmiths, one armed with a half-extinguished lantern and the other with a sledge-hammer, did not add to the beauty or respectability of the group. No wonder, then, that several of the gentlemen at the table laid their hands upon their swords; and the one who had been speaking advanced a step or two, exclaiming, in a threatening tone, "What is this? What means this ill-mannered intrusion? Who are you, sirs, and what seek you here?" "Shelter from the storm, and food, if it can be procured," said Edward: "we know not upon whom----" But, before he could finish the sentence, the gentleman to whom it was addressed started forward and caught him by the hand, exclaiming, "What! Ned, my boy! How came you to seek me here?" "I did not seek you here, my lord," replied Edward, "and, to say truth, if I had known you were here, I should not have come. I was on my way to Aix to join your lordship, according to your commands; but the road is impassable. Some of us have been half drowned; and, though this is a desolate-looking place, we said, 'Any port in a storm.'" "But who are these gentlemen with you?" asked Lord Montagu, still speaking in French, but running his eye somewhat doubtfully over the group of five persons who had advanced some way from the door. "Those two," answered Edward, in the same gay tone, which was generally affected by pages of noble houses,--"those two are my servants, or rather your lordship's, the renowned and reformed Pierrot la Grange and the facetious Jacques Beaupré. Those two--the one with the lantern and the other with the hammer--are two respectable blacksmiths and horse-doctors, who have joined themselves on to me and mine and did good service in curing one of my horses. They profess to be Savoyards returning to their own country." "They shall be welcome," said Lord Montagu, smiling,--"most welcome, for I have no less than five good horses sick of some distemper at Chambéry. But who is the other,--that gentleman who seems half drowned?"