"You have missed some out!" exclaimed the listener. "Do not miss any, Elspeth! Say about the rivers abune the knee and all the blood that's shed on the earth----" "Fie, Maister Anne!" said Mrs. Saunders reprovingly. "Yon verses are no' fittin' for a bairn, and A did wrang ever tae tell them tae ye." However, to get them over as quickly as possible, she went back and repeated them. "'O they rade on and farther on, And they waded rivers abune the knee; And they saw neither sun nor moon, But they heard the roaring of the sea.'" "I like that!" murmured the Comte de Flavigny, with a shudder. "'It was mirk, mirk night, there was nae starlight, They waded through red blude to the knee; For a' the blude that's shed on the earth Rins through the springs o' that countrie.'" "But what does that mean?" asked the child, captured by a delicious horror. "How could----" "It's a' silly havers, child--it's poetry, and nae sense in it," replied Elspeth crossly. "Noo harken aboot the apple. 'Syne they came to a garden green----'" But at the second attempt to pluck the apple the door opened and Mlle. Angèle came in. "My sister desires that you will go now," she said to Elspeth. "Mrs. Barnes is waiting to take you to her house. We shall expect you to-morrow morning at seven o'clock." Though she had a pleasant smile on her face there was no resisting the quiet authority of her tone. Mrs. Saunders rose with much reluctance, bent over her charge and gave him a kiss--by no means the ritual of every night--and with a very high head left the room. Mlle. de Chaulnes came over to the bed. "Are you comfortable, little one?" she asked kindly. "You will not be frightened? My sister sleeps next door, and if you want anything, you have only to call her." "Yes, thank you, Madame," said Anne-Hilarion a little shyly, and she too kissed him and went away. (2) But the mere absence of alarm is not in itself sufficient to induce sleep. M. le Comte de Flavigny had seen too much that day for ready slumber, and now he began to see it all over again: the busy road from Rochester, the stage-coach and its passengers--the fat traveller in a shawl, the thin one who had, to Elspeth's intense indignation, offered him a sip of rum--and everything in Rose Cottage, down to the grey cat. The last object of which he thought was his goldfish, on the dressing-table, for just as he was making up his mind to get up and look at it, he fell fast asleep.