She clasped the child tightly. Suddenly she I screamed aloud, for she felt the vessel beneath her tremble amid a deafening explosion. The child ceased sobbing through fright. The schooner's magazine had exploded, casting her into the air. The detonation was followed by a terrible silence while pieces of broken timber and mutilated bodies floated on the surface of the water. Naundorff raised the almost inanimate form of his daughter from the deck, and then exclaimed in broken tones that seemed to presage naught but a hopeless future: "Blood has been spilled for our cause; God is against us!" Book IV PICMORT Chapter I THE CASTLE At the foot of a mountain-chain which crosses Brittany, continues through Normandy and terminates in Cherbourg, stands the castle of Picmort. It pertains to the de Brezé patrimony, through the Guyornarch fief, which was the avenue through which the illustrious family claimed descent from the royal house of Brittany. Notwithstanding political vicissitudes and the invasion of new ideas, the de Brezés continued to exercise a veritable sovereignty in that corner of France. There lived not in the valley a shepherd nor a long-haired peasant who failed to acknowledge the dominion of the House de Brezé and render the tribute of a reverence approaching divine honors. René during his hunting journeys to Picmort received proofs of the extraordinary attachment which the Bretons evinced to their master. One evening as the setting sun gilded the lichens on the rough Celtic rocks, there traveled toward the thicket a woman and a man,--the latter carrying a child in his arms. They journeyed laboriously, as tho greatly fatigued, especially the woman, who with the greatest difficulty lifted her small feet, clad in rude sabots, which were in keeping with her peasant's dress and the white coif covering her blond hair. At last, heaving a sigh, she sank upon the ground. The man came to her saying warningly and gently: "Mademoiselle, it will soon be night and if we do not hurry, we shall have to sleep here with the child. Can you not make an effort?" "The sabots have bruised my feet," she complained, her beautiful young face full of pain. "But no matter, I shall start again." She tried to walk, but failed, saying: "O I cannot, I cannot! What will become of us?" Louis Pierre did not dare to insist further. He placed the sleeping child on the ground and wiped his wet forehead with a nervous hand. Suddenly, the barking of a dog came to them, followed by the appearance of a great mastiff, springing through the thicket. The child awoke and began to cry, and the woman,--girl, rather--half rose. Then the approaching tread of a horse was heard and a splendid voice called to the dog: "Here Silvano!" and the horseman sprang lightly to earth. Turning to the travelers, he said: "A good and holy evening to you." He was a tall, young, finely proportioned peasant of beautiful beardless face and abundant hair.