"No buts, my friend, if you will be so kind. Years later, when the British stormed New Orleans, Lieutenant Merriwell was there with General Andrew Jackson. He survived the battle like a man whose life is charmed, though all around him comrades fell and three horses were shot under him. Then, when the strife was done, he went to the grand banquet tendered to the victors. While gayety was at its height he abruptly left the table. Next morning he was found upon the grass before the tomb of Julie d'Ayen. He was dead. He died from snake-bite. "The years marched on and stories spread about the town, stories of a strange and lovely _belle dame sans merci_, a modern Circe who lured young gallants to their doom. Time and again some gay young blade of New Orleans would boast a conquest. Passing late at night through Royal Street, he would have a flower dropped to him as he walked underneath a balcony. He would meet a lovely girl dressed in the early Empire style, and be surprized at the ease with which he pushed his suit; then--upon the trees in Chartres Street appeared his funeral notices. He was dead, invariably he was dead of snake-bite. _Parbleu_, it got to be a saying that he who died mysteriously must have met the Lady of the Moonlight as he walked through Royal Street!" He paused and poured a thimbleful of brandy in his coffee. "You see?" he asked. "No, I'm shot if I do!" I answered. "I can't see the connection between----" "Night and breaking dawn, perhaps?" he asked sarcastically. "If two and two make four, my friend, and even you will not deny they do, then these things I have told you give an explanation of our young friend's trouble. This girl he met was most indubitably Julie, poor little Julie d'Ayen on whose tombstone it is carved: '_Ici repose malheureusement_--here lies unhappily.' The so mysterious snake which menaces young Monsieur Minton is none other than the aged Maman Dragonne--_grand'tante_, as Julie called her." "But Ned's already failed to keep his tryst," I objected. "Why didn't this snake-woman sting him in the hotel, or----" "Do you recall what Julie said when first the snake appeared?" he interrupted. "'Not this one, _grand'tante_!' And again, in the old cemetery when the serpent actually struck at him, she threw herself before him and received the blow. It could not permanently injure her; to earthly injuries the dead are proof, but the shock of it caused her to swoon, it seems. _Monsieur_," he bowed to Ned, "you are more fortunate than any of those others. Several times you have been close to death, but each time you escaped. You have been given chance and chance again to keep your pledged word to the dead, a thing no other faithless lover of the little Julie ever had. It seems, Monsieur, this dead girl truly loves you." "How horrible!" I muttered. "You said it, Doctor Trowbridge!" Ned seconded. "It looks as if I'm in a spot, all right." "_Mais non_," de Grandin contradicted. "Escape is obvious, my friend."