Catherine remained standing in her room. Very soon a noise at its inner door told that Maclean had returned from his false quest, which had taken him only to an unused and bolted outer door originally designed to give a side entrance to the room, that apartment having been formerly devoted to the purposes of an office. She did not heed Maclean's efforts to open the door, which she had locked on her side. These efforts soon became extremely violent, and at last resulted in the breaking of the door, and in the appearance of the now irate colonel, followed by his men with the lantern. "Why, miss," said he, "somebody locked that door behind me!" "Yes," replied Catherine, lightly, affecting a triumphant smile of pleased revenge; "I did! You wouldn't take my word that nobody was behind it, and I thought I'd punish you!" With which she left the room and went serenely down-stairs, followed by the somewhat mystified and crestfallen colonel, who had left his two men to make fast the broken door. "The young lady was right. No one was there," said Maclean, gruffly, and went immediately to Monsieur de St. Valier, who gave a deep breath of relief and returned to the parlor, whither his guests accompanied him. Blagdon, to be at a distance from Catherine and Gerard, who stood talking together at the stair-foot, went with his two men to the rear of the hall, to wait for the two who had been up-stairs with Maclean. Thus it happened that, of the people in the hall who had seen the figure cross the landing, none but Gerard saw the two privates reappear presently from Catherine's room; and, as Blagdon was in no mood for questions when those two rejoined him, the impression was not corrected that the flying figure had been one of them. Blagdon forthwith led his four men, with the three who had been put on guard beneath the window, to the barracks, dismissed them, and repaired to a drinking-place. Catherine and Gerard went back to their uncle's guests; but the sister, bearing up against the exhaustion caused by the scene she had passed through, showed an abstraction not entirely to be attributed to happiness at the recovery of her mother's portrait. Dick plodded on through the snow, past near and distant churches, monasteries, seminaries, gardens, fine houses, and mean houses, keeping a frequent lookout behind him, and up and down what streets he crossed, and came eventually to the low rampart near the grand battery, from which the precipice fell steeply to the narrow strip of the lower town that lay between the cliff's base and the St. Lawrence.