"You are sharp as a gimlet," said he. "I see I may as well tell you first as last. Marry, an you will have it, the place is haunted." "Holy Virgin!" I cried, crossing myself. "Aye. Twenty years ago, in the great massacre--you know naught of that: you were not born, I take it, and, besides, are a country boy. But I was here, and I know. A man dared not stir out of doors that dark day. The gutters ran blood." "And that house--what happened in that house?" "Why, it was the house of a Huguenot gentleman, M. de Béthune," he answered, bringing out the name hesitatingly in a low voice. "They were all put to the sword--the whole household. It was Guise's work. The Duc de Guise sat on his white horse, in this very street here, while it was going on. Parbleu! that was a day." "Mon dieu! yes." "Well, that is an old story now," he resumed in a different tone. "One-and-twenty years ago, that was. Such things don't happen now. But the people, they have not forgotten; they will not go near that house. No one will live there." "And have others seen as well as I?" "So they say. But I'll not let it be talked of on my premises. Folk might get to think them too near the haunted house. 'Tis another matter with you, though, since you have had the vision." "There were three men," I said, "young men, in sombre dress--" "M. de Béthune and his cousins. What further? Did you hear shrieks?" "There was naught further," I said, shuddering. "I saw them for the space of a lightning-flash, plain as I see you. The next minute the shutters were closed again." "'Tis a marvel," he answered gravely. "But I know what has disturbed them in their graves, the heretics! It is that they have lost their leader." I stared at him blankly, and he added: "Their Henry of Navarre." "But he is not lost. There has been no battle." "Lost to them," said Maître Jacques, "when he turns Catholic." "Oh!" I cried. "Oh!" he mocked. "You come from the country; you don't know these things." "But the King of Navarre is too stiff-necked a heretic!" "Bah! Time bends the stiffest neck. Tell me this: for what do the learned doctors sit in council at Mantes?" "Oh," said I, bewildered, "you tell me news, Maître Jacques." "If Henry of Navarre be not a Catholic before the month is out, spit me on my own jack," he answered, eying me rather keenly as he added: "It should be welcome news to you." Welcome was it; it made plain the reason Monsieur's change of base. Yet it was my duty to be discreet. "I am glad to hear of any heretic coming to the faith," I said. "Pshaw!" he cried. "To the devil with pretences! 'Tis an open secret that your patron has gone over to Navarre." "I know naught of it." "Well, pardieu! my Lord Mayenne does, then. If when he came to Paris M. de St. Quentin counted that the League would not know his parleyings, he was a fool." "His parleyings?" I echoed feebly.