overmuch which way it goes."

"And you have forgotten Mademoiselle de Liancourt," said the priest.

"A second time your cassock protects you, father," laughed the other. "It were a sin, indeed, to forget her. Pass the bottle, and let us have brimming glasses to drink her health. Christine de Liancourt, the most beautiful woman in Montvilliers."

"In the world," corrected the priest quietly. "She is heart and soul for this pale scholar, and she has mentioned Gaspard Lemasle to me."

"By the faith, you shall tell me what she said," the other cried, striking the table until the glasses rattled.

"Nay, nay, it was for no ears but mine; yet, mark you, she knows a brave man when she sees him, and——"

The priest stopped suddenly. The silent street had suddenly awoke. There were hurrying feet and men shouting to each other as they ran, then the sound of a gun which boomed in deep vibration and died slowly away in the distance.

With inarticulate and fragmentary exclamations the four men sprang up and hurried to the door. Herrick followed them more leisurely.

"The Duke is dead!" a man cried to them as they stood in the doorway, and as he ran he shouted the news to others who had been brought from their houses by the sound of the gun. "The Duke is dead!"

"Dead!" said the priest slowly, crossing himself, more by habit than intention it seemed, for other thoughts than of death were reflected in his face. He looked at his companions one after the other, deep meaning in his look, and last of all his eyes rested on Roger Herrick, standing a little in the rear, his face lit up by the light of a lamp hanging in the passage. For a moment the priest did not appear to realize that Herrick was a stranger, and then his eyes opened wider and remained fixed upon him.

"A sudden death," said Herrick. "I heard you say just now that he might live for weeks."

Father Bertrand glanced back into the room they had left, to the place where he and his companions had been sitting.

"Very sudden," he answered, and then after a pause he added, "Very strange."

CHAPTER II

THE CROIX VERTE LOSES ITS GUEST

"Does the death of a man prevent the living from finishing the bottle? It's a sin to waste good wine," said Lemasle, striding back into the room.

He spoke rather as a man who was perplexed than as one who was callous. Whatever scheme Father Bertrand was persuading him to, had been in the future a few moments ago; there was plenty of time to weigh it and digest it, to play with it and calculate the chances; that cannon booming out into the night had made a quick decision imperative, and Gaspard Lemasle was troubled.

"Leave him to me," said the priest to the other two men, and then as Herrick turned and went down the passage toward the stairs, Father Bertrand drew his companions closer to him, and talked eagerly to them for a few moments.

When Herrick descended the stairs a few minutes later the passage was empty, and only a waiter was in the long room. The conversation he had chanced to overhear had made little impression upon him. Was there ever a state yet in which every citizen was contented with his rulers? Here in Montvilliers there were contentions, and the coming demise of the Duke prompted men to talk. How dangerous such talk might be, Herrick had no means of judging. He had heard a few names which had little meaning for him—a count, a beautiful woman, and a scholar. Evidently they were of import in the Duchy, but of what interest could they be to him? Nor had he particularly noticed the priest's close scrutiny of his face. Father Bertrand had been astonished to see a stranger there, one who had certainly overheard something of what had been said, and, being a politician as well as a churchman, more loyal as the latter possibly than as the former, he had naturally sought to understand what manner of man this stranger might be. That was all.

So Herrick sought to dismiss the occurrence from his mind as he passed out of the inn, and, after standing on the narrow footway for a moment looking up and down the street, turned in the direction of the castle, bent on a short walk before bed.

There is ever a sense of mystery in an unknown city when it is traversed for the first time after nightfall. Seen over the intervening roofs, some tower or battlemented edifice, rising gray and ghost-like in the dim light of the moon as it did to-night, seems full of mystery; there is a secret in every street turning to right and left, leading we know not whither; in every narrow alley, looking dangerous betwixt frowning walls; in every dark window, from whence evil might peep out unseen. In Vayenne this sense of mystery was intensified since for long centuries history had been busy with it. Its interest lay in the folded mantle of the past rather than in the open lap of the present. Its foundations were in the days of Charlemagne, and in war and peace it had played a foremost part since then. Hate and ambition had fought out their deadly feuds around it and in its streets. Thrice it had closed its gates against the invader and stood a siege. Chivalry had held sway in it, and in cruel ages deeds unspeakable had been perpetrated within its walls. It had had its periods of great glory and of even greater neglect, of victory and defeat, yet it stood to-day as it ever had stood, the capital of the Duchy of Montvilliers, the centre of an independent state, the dukes of which could still link themselves with those Frankish pirates who had conquered and made their home here.

But to-day Vayenne had fallen behind in the march of modern civilization. For the most part its streets were old and ill-lighted. Men still inhabited houses which had stood for centuries, the castle still frowned over the city as it had done in the Middle Ages, and the ruling hand had still an iron grip in it. Perhaps nowhere in Europe had the ways of the foreigner made less progress. Travellers had not yet marked Vayenne as a place to visit. It was not easy of access, and no one had written eulogies concerning it. That it had fallen behind the times in this manner may have been a potent factor in keeping it inviolate and independent. What wonder then if its rulers, and its people, too, were satisfied with things as they were?

Well might a traveller feel strangely alone and out of the world in this city, whose monuments of chiselled stone and sturdy oak had defied the ravages of the conqueror and of time. Yet no such strangeness took possession of Roger Herrick. Vayenne had been to him a dream city. He had known of it from earliest childhood, why and how he hardly understood; as a boy he had vowed one day to see and know it in reality; and to-night the sudden rushes of bell and chime music, the very cadences of the carillon, which came from the belfry of the great church whose spire rose high toward heaven, seemed familiar. They were not new, he had only forgotten them for a while. He seemed to have known these dark streets with their overhanging houses in some other life, and in this present existence the death of the Duke to-night seemed to hold some meaning for him.

This sense of familiarity with his surroundings was particularly strong as he stopped at a corner with the intention of turning and retracing his steps to the inn. Some distance down, the street was spanned by a deep archway, in the upper part of which was a great clock. By the light of a lamp swinging at the corner, Herrick saw that it was called the Rue de la Grosse Horloge. Its upper end, at least, was better lighted than most of the streets he had passed through, and he walked toward the archway, which was old and weather-worn, and must