To my mind there is no condition more awful than that of the man who is dragged, as it were, to the commission of a crime by an irresistible power, a terrible unseen force that laps round him like a hungry tide, that drives him onward through mist and fog, despite his struggles, and leaves him at last on the shores of the lost, there to await the last call, there to rot amidst the maddening phantoms of the past, there to repent, if there be aught of advantage in repentance. I have fought with the fiend, struggled at the foot of the cross, prayed, with tears, for strength that danced before me to vanish like the elf-light on a marsh, and then--came back to my sin like a hog to his wallow. And so it was with me now. At the very moment when I thought I was gaining strength, when I had gone to God with my heart, I fell again. We had come to the Loup Garou, that little stream which, rising in the forest of Villedomain, steals slowly toward the Indre, as treacherous in its crafty strength as the beast from which it takes its name. As we approached the streamlet the sky darkened, the wind rose, the birch-trees shook and crackled their dry arms, and the snow began to fall in soft white flakes. It was then, in crossing the lonely forest bridge, that ran on wooden piles from bank to bank, that the evil came to me, like a shadow of the approaching night. Marcilly was in front. One shot from my pistol, and Marie and I were free. She would never know--the trees around us were blind and dumb. They would tell no story, and I would lock the secret in my heart. My hand stole toward my holster-flap, and, with a shiver and a start, I drew it back--I had forgotten. It was not only God’s eye that saw me. Scarce a hundred paces behind rode Badehorn, and I feared him more than my God. The chance saved me--simple chance, or I had fallen utterly. And yet but a half-hour back I had prayed for help, I had asked the Most High to give His creature a little strength--and here I was but a hand’s breadth from a mortal sin. There are those who will tell me that I was guilty of that crime--that I am guilty now--for I had sinned in my soul if not in deed. Away in the deep of the forest a dog-wolf howled, a single, long-drawn note of baffled vengeance, of quivering, savage despair. The cry echoed dismally through the birch woods, and was caught up again among the oaks and beeches of Loches, until at last it died away, leaving us to the silence of the softly falling snow. It was a fit echo to the horror in my soul. “It blows chill,” exclaimed Marcilly, drawing his cloak closer around him; “’twill be a bad night for the Princess’s journey.” “They may halt at Varennes.” I wondered I could speak so calmly. “If Lanoy allows that he is--but he never will. They must push through somehow to St. Bauld.” “And if they do not?” I was speaking at random; my mind was full of other things.