"You want me to go?" Her voice was low: strained; in it, too, was a hard, rebellious accent. "But I can't--can't--until--" "What?" "You promise to set him free! This man who brought me back! Don't you see you must, _mon père_? Must!" she repeated. His thin lips drew back disagreeably; he seemed about to speak; then reached among the papers and, turned them over absently. "Very well!" he said at length without glancing up. "You promise," her voice expressed relief and a little surprise, "to set him free?" "Have I not said so?" His eyelids veiled a peculiar look. "Yes, he shall be liberated--very shortly." "Thank you, _mon père_." A moment she bent over him; the proud, sweet lips brushed his forehead. "I will go, then, at once." And she started toward the door. Near the threshold she paused; looked back to smile gratefully at the Governor, then quickly went out. CHAPTER XII AT THE COCKLES A rugged mass of granite, rent by giant fissures, and surrounded by rocks and whirlpools, the Norman English isle, so-called "Key to the Channel," one hundred miles, or more, northwest of the Mount, had from time immemorial offered haven to ships out of the pale of French ports. Not only a haven, but a home, or that next-best accommodation, an excellent inn. Perched in the hollow of the mighty cliff and reached by a flight of somewhat perilous stone stairs, the Cockles, for so the ancient tavern was called, set squarely toward the sea, and opened wide its shell, as it were, to all waifs or stormy petrels blown in from the foamy deep. Good men, bad men; Republicans, royalists; French-English, English-French, the landlord--old Pierre Laroche, retired sea-captain and owner of a number of craft employed in a dangerous, but profitable, occupation--received them willingly, and in his solicitude for their creature comforts and the subsequent reckoning, cared not a jot for their politics, morals, or social views. It was enough if the visitor had no lenten capacity; looked the fleshpots in the face and drank of his bottle freely. The past few days the character of old Pierre's guests had left some room for complaint on that score. But a small number of the crew of the swift-looking vessel, well-known to the islanders, and now tossing in the sea-nook below, had, shortly after their arrival toward dusk of a stormy day, repaired to the inn, and then they had not called for their brandy or wine in the smart manner of seamen prepared for unstinted sacrifice to Bacchus. On the contrary, they drank quietly, talked soberly, and soon prepared to leave. "Something has surely gone wrong," thought their host. "Why did not your captain come ashore?" he asked. "Not see his old friend, Pierre Laroche, at once! It is most unlike him."