More than eighteen months had slid away since the day when Denham Ivor had been summarily despatched with other détenus to Valenciennes. Once or twice a letter from him had reached the Barons, but it was now long since the arrival of the last. Whether Denham remained yet at Valenciennes was a matter of supposition, not of certainty. For aught that his friends knew to the contrary, he might have been passed on to the grim fortress, Bitche, to Sédan, or elsewhere. Roy continued to live at Verdun with his parents, for the long-desired passport to England had never been granted. Though not compelled to give his parole, or to sign his name twice daily at the _maison de ville_, as were all détenus who did not care to pay a monthly tax for freedom from this bugbear, he was practically as much one of Napoleon’s prisoners as any man in the place. One day in the spring of 1807 he stood upon the ramparts, gazing eagerly towards the nearest town gate. Roy at sixteen was much the same that Roy at twelve or fourteen had been, only decidedly taller and broader. He looked almost as boyish as ever, with the same curly fair hair and honest grey eyes. Not so good-looking, perhaps, as in more childish days, but attractive enough. To some extent habit does and must mean use. Four years out of a boy’s life are a goodly slice of time, and Roy had now been four years a captive, banished from England, and separated from his twin-sister. He might and often did chafe and fume, and it had been a sore disappointment not to find himself on his sixteenth birthday an officer in the English Army. Still, he had good health and unquenchable spirits, and however impatient he might be by fits and starts, no one could have described him as unhappy. He had the gift of making the best of things; and a certain breezy spirit of philosophy stood him in good stead. Hard as it had been to find himself cut off from Molly for an indefinite period, harder still to lose Denham, he managed on the whole to enjoy life, finding entertainment in everything and everybody. “I say. Hallo! There’s something going on,” he exclaimed. Roy gazed with widely-opened eyes, trying to make out the cause of that gathering throng. Colonel Baron had gone into a neighbouring street on business, telling Roy that he would meet him presently on the ramparts. Roy supposed that he would be expected to remain where he was till his father should return. But as he watched, the pull became too strong. Something certainly was happening. What if Colonel Baron had forgotten all about him, and had gone in that direction to discover what was being done? Roy could endure himself no longer. He descended to the ground, set off full tilt, and speedily reached the outskirts of the crowd, running plump against the Rev. Charles Kinsland, who received the onslaught with a “Hallo, Roy!” “I beg your pardon, sir. What’s up?”