"Bah!" Her strong bold eyes swept back. "Much good it would do me!" "And for that reason--" "Messieurs!" the landlord's voice broke in upon them; "behold!" it seemed to say, as pushing through the company, he preceded a lanky lad who bore by their legs many plucked fowls and birds--woodcock, wild duck, cliff pigeons--and made his way to the great open fireplace at one end of the room. There, bending over the glowing embers, the landlord deliberately stirred and spread them; then, reaching for a bar of steel, he selected a poulet from the hand of the lanky attendant and prepared to adjust it; but before doing so, prodded it with his finger, surveyed it critically, and held it up for admiring attention. "Who says old Pierre Laroche doesn't know how to care for his friends? What think you of it, my masters?" "Plump as the King's confessor," muttered the poet. "Or your King himself!" said one of the islanders. "On with the King! Skewer the King!" exclaimed a fierce voice. "And then we'll eat him!" laughed the girl, showing her white teeth. "Thoughtless children!" From his place at the table in the small room adjoining, the priest, attracted by the grim merriment of the islanders, looked down to regard them; the red fire; the red gown. "Here, at least, will you find a safe asylum, Father," said his companion, the Black Seigneur, in an absent tone; "a little rough, perhaps, to suit your calling--" "The rougher, the more suitable--as I've often had occasion to learn since leaving Verranch." "Since being driven from it, you mean!" shortly. "Ah, those revolutionary documents--placed in my garden!" "To make you appear--you, Father!--a sanguinary character!" But the other's laugh rang false. "Alas, such wickedness! But I was too content; the rose-covered cottage too comfortable; its garden, an Eden! It was more meet I should be driven forth; go out into the highways, where I found--such misery! I reproached myself I had not sought it sooner--voluntarily. From north to south peasants dying, women and children starving, no one to administer the last rites--on every side, work, work for the outcast priest! For ten years it has occupied him--a blessed privilege--" "And then," the young man, who had seemed absorbed in other thoughts, hardly listening, looked mechanically up, "you came back?" "A weakness of age! To see the old place once more! The little church; God's acre at its side; to stand on the hill at Verranch and look out a last time over the beautiful vale toward the Mount!" Briefly he paused. "Yet I am glad I yielded to the temptation; otherwise should I not have met your old servant, Sanchez; who told me all--how you had long been looking for me, and arranged our meeting for that day--on the island of Casque!" "But not," the young man's demeanor at once became intent; his eyes gleamed with sudden fierce lights, "for what followed!"