"I am he," replied the keeper, pausing as he dipped his pen in the ink, and looking over the top of his desk saw a woman neatly but simply dressed, as became a citizeness of the Republic. The outlines of her features were partly hidden by the hood of a gray cloak drawn up about her head, but the shadows cast by this garment were not deep enough to hide altogether the beauty of the oval face beneath it. "Whom do you wish to see?" he asked, evidently satisfied with his inspection, for he dipped his pen in the ink-bottle and resumed his work of ruling perpendicular lines in a ledger. "I wish to see the prisoner, Robert Tournay." The jailer put down his ruler. "That is impossible; the prisoner Tournay is not here." "Not here! Then he has been set at liberty!" The cry of joy that sprang to her lips checked itself, frozen by the quick negative gesture on the keeper's part. She placed one hand upon the iron rail before her and closed her fingers tightly around it. "He is not--Do not tell me he is dead!" she whispered, looking up at the inexpressive face with a pleading expression in her eyes, as if the jailer were the arbiter of Tournay's fate. "Transferred to the conciergerie. You may see for yourself, citizeness," and he held up the book and pointed with his forefinger to the notation upon the neatly ruled page, "'Trans. to C.' That means that Robert Tournay, former colonel in the army of the Republic, was yesterday transferred to the prison of the conciergerie." Edmé's heart grew cold. She had no means of knowing the full purport of the change, but she felt that it boded nothing but ill to Robert Tournay. "Can you tell me why this removal was made?" she asked, although fearing to hear the answer. "To facilitate his trial. As every one knows the Revolutionary Tribunal is in the same building with the conciergerie. A prisoner may be brought from his cell in the prison into the tribunal chamber, be tried, sentenced, and returned to his dungeon without once being obliged to go outside. He only passes out into the streets on his way to the guillotine." "Has the trial already taken place? Can I see him if I go there at once?" she demanded hurriedly. As the jailer saw the young woman's evident distress his voice softened a little as he made reply: "That you may be prepared for another disappointment, I tell you now, that in order to visit him in the conciergerie, you will have to be furnished with a written permit from some member of the committee. Robert Tournay is confined 'in secret.'"