back before 10 o'clock. Marguerite's heart quite misgave her when she heard this, but as time moved on, and it came to half-past 7, she was re-assured to find that Jacques Gaultier was putting away his tools, and finally left the house, saying that he had "work for himself at home, but would return the following morning to finish repairing those rafters that had so suddenly got out of repair."

Matters seemed better still when her Father said he did not feel at all himself that night, and that he thought he would go off to bed. Marguerite wished him "Good night;" and at 8 o'clock found herself alone and mistress of her own actions. She might now have brought Charlie into the house, but that she remembered her Father's prohibition of such a thing; and at least she thought it best and fittest to leave him master in his own house, at the same time reserving to herself liberty to control her own actions. This was fair enough.

At about 8 o'clock, as agreed on, Marguerite took her little lantern, and going round the path to where they had been standing two evenings before, she flashed the light three times trusting that Charlie would be able to see it. Meanwhile Jacques had come out from one of the mill sheds, where he had been concealed, and went quickly up to the room behind the granary, only pausing on his way to tell old Pierre that he was there.

We will leave him waiting for his prey, with a dark sardonic smile on his ill-favoured countenance, and return to Marguerite, who is waiting in the granary for her lover, confident that "all is well," and having no thoughts but pleasant ones concerning the coming meeting. Even the remembrance of Hirzel's absence brings no disquietude with it. Her thoughts shape themselves into a blessing when her brother's bright manly face comes before her, and then she bends all her attention to listen for Charlie's approach.

She had been waiting for rather more than an hour, when she heard her name called softly; then up Charlie scrambled, and when standing on the wheel his head comes just half way up the window.

"Well, here I am, Marguerite; I hope you were not alarmed at the time I have taken, but I was on duty when I saw your signal, and it was some little time before I could get away."

"I was getting a little anxious, Charlie, but 'all is well' now that you have come."

"Ah, that is right! but how are you to-night, little woman—all the fancies fled?"

"Almost Charlie, but still not quite; you will think me very foolish, I know, but everything was so beautifully arranged for my seeing you easily to-night that I can't help thinking that some one else has been arranging too for some purpose of his own."

"Come, come, you little croaker, try and put such thoughts out of your pretty head, and remember I 'deserve the fair' after having been so 'brave' as to mount this rickety wheel, but I wish you would take this parcel from me; the bobbins are in it, which I have perilled my life to bring! I hope you see my devotion clearly, eh?"

"I do, indeed, Charlie, and now I shall work all the better and be more in earnest; I don't mean you to have all the work on your shoulders when we marry; I know I shall be able to get sale for my lace amongst the beautiful ladies you tell me of in England."

"Ah, Marguerite, that is just what I wanted to speak to you about; I suppose your Father still wishes you to marry that rascal Gaultier? By the way, I believe he or some one very like him was sneaking round the cliffs on Monday night. After I left you, I fancied I saw him; it might be only fancy. Did you see anything of him?

"I wish—."

Alas! poor Charlie! Will you speak again to finish that sentence and tell what you wish? For suddenly the mill wheel has turned round with a tremendous crash, and the brave young soldier has been hurled down! And Marguerite, what of her? With one agonized cry she rushed to the door intending to run outside to see if anything could be done for Charlie, when she came face to face with Jacques Gaultier! In an instant it all flashed on her that he must have wrought this terrible work, and, overcome by grief and horror, she sank down in a deadly faint. Bad man as he was, Jacques was really overcome at the consequences of his act, for he thought he had also killed Marguerite. He called loudly to her Father, who came up hurriedly. He was also seriously alarmed when his gaze rested on his child lying like one dead on the floor. Between them they carried her downstairs and laid her on her bed. They applied such restoratives as suggested themselves, but as everything was for sometime quite unavailing, a more miserable pair it would have been difficult to discover.

Hirzel now came in. He was running upstairs to the granary when his Father called him in to see if he could do anything for his poor sister.

"A pretty night's work this," he said, when he came into the room and saw his sister lying there.

At this moment she opened her eyes, and he went close to her and raised her in his arms. With an expression of deep thankfulness, Marguerite's first words were to send that murderer, Jacques Gaultier, away out of her sight. Hirzel ordered him to leave the room, with more fierceness in his tone than anyone had heard there before.

"Oh! Hirzel, what shall I do without Charlie? Stay with me, only you, and I will tell you all."

Hearing this her Father left the room, and Hirzel bent down and whispered to her—-

"Charlie is alive and well. He told me to tell you this himself."

"Oh! Hirzel, you are deceiving me. How could he be alive after such a dreadful fall? It was terrible."

Here Marguerite's fortitude gave way, and she indulged in a flood of tears, while Hirzel looked at her with the masculine helplessness usual on such occasions, and indeed it seemed to cost the fine tender-hearted fellow an effort to keep from joining in them too. At last he said, "Well Marguerite, if you don't stop, I'll go off, and tell Charlie you only cried after you heard he was alive and well."

"Ah! Hirzel, is that not the way with our sex. Sometimes, to cry over the best and happiest times while the worst is bravely borne?"

Hirzel then told Marguerite how he had met Charlie just outside at the foot of the lane, considerably bruised and knocked about, though without any internal injuries. How he escaped was nothing short of a miracle, one of those things which occasionally happen, perhaps, to show what can be done when there is the will to do it.

There was an iron loop which projected about a foot from the walls, this Charlie made a spring at after the manner of a gymnast; he caught it, and although it came away in his grasp, yet it broke his fall, and what was of more importance, changed the direction of his course to the brickwork alongside the wheel, instead of the water under it. Once on the brickwork he jumped down into the garden, and went out into the lane, where he met Hirzel.

Charlie did not for a moment suspect that there was anything but pure accident in what had happened, and as he met Hirzel just at that moment he judged it wisest not to return near the house in case he should get Marguerite into trouble; but after telling Hirzel to assure his sister that he was safe, he set off to the fortress, little thinking he was supposed to be lying dead at the foot of the Moulin Huêt cliffs, carried there by the mill stream.

Marguerite now told to her brother, her suspicions of how all had happened. He wished to go immediately and tax Jacques with the crime; but, in deference to his sister's wishes, remained where he was. The noise of the mill wheel turning round suddenly ceased, and on Hirzel's going up to ascertain the cause, he found his Father tying up the rope in the room behind the granary. This rope passed out of a small round hole in the wall of this room, and round the corner of the house where it was attached to the wheel. The window through which Charlie and Marguerite had been talking was rather a large one, but had some iron bars