"But--a great deal!" responded Anne-Hilarion with dignity. "I have just been there--did Grandpapa not tell you? I went from the house of the little old ladies at Canterbury; a horrid man took me away in the middle of the night, but M. le Chevalier de la Vireville came after me, and he--well, I do not know what he did to that man, but we went away in the middle of the night again from Abbeville, and were in a ship, and a postchaise, and a small boat, and it was very cold, and a shot hit M. le Chevalier on the head, and we hid in a cave, and then we were in a forest in Brittany--there they wear such strange clothes, Papa--and then in another ship, and at Jersey, and after that----" "Good God!" exclaimed the Marquis, rather pale. And he sat down in a chair with the traveller still in his arms. "Now tell me everything from the beginning, Anne, and not so fast. . . ." * * * * * M. de Flavigny heard it all again that evening from a narrator much more moved than the first had been--principal actor though that narrator was as well. Mr. Elphinstone was indeed so overcome with self-condemnation for having allowed himself to be duped, and the child to depart, that it was his son-in-law who had to comfort him. In the end the old gentleman registered a firm vow never to take any more French lads into his household from motives of charity. "But I felt so sure that I had heard you mention the name of de Chaulnes, René," he said in justification. "And she seemed, that old she-devil, really to have known your family. For you say that the incident of your being lost in a quarry as a boy is true?" His son-in-law nodded thoughtfully. "She must have got hold of it somehow--though one would have thought that some fictitious adventure of my youth would have served as well. But I never remember to have heard my parents mention the name." "M. de la Vireville implied that it was not their own," murmured the old man. "I think he knows more about them than I do," said René. "They were gone, at any rate, by the time I got a warrant out against them, as he prophesied in his letter that they would be." "You have heard from him then!" ejaculated the Marquis. "Where is he, sir? Have I no chance of thanking him in person?" "I am afraid not," said Mr. Elphinstone. "I would give a thousand pounds to do it. But, after all, what are thanks?" "All that Fortuné would accept," said the Marquis quickly. "On my soul, I don't know which has moved me more, Anne's danger or _his_ courage, address, and uncalled-for devotion. . . . But where is he, and what of this letter?" "I believe," said Mr. Elphinstone, taking a paper from his desk, "that he is either in Jersey or back among his Chouans in Brittany. The letter, such as it is, he sent by Mr. Tollemache."