FLOWER-O'-THE-CORN.

Evening Star, Issue 11628, 12 July 1902, Page 2

FLOWER-O'-THE-CORN.

■•'• S. R. CROCKETT." Author of 'The Raiders,' 'The .Grey Mac,' 'The Blade Douglaß,' 'Lilac Sunbbnhet,' 'Sweetheart Travellers,' etc., etc. SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS. CHAPTERS|k^pi.—The great Lord Mar boroijgh' , Blenheim. On; his staffs is Manrice Raith7 -who is the Duke's favorite, vvhile walking through the cornfieldi he"meet,<r with a sweet young girl, tthom he atbnce names the "Flower o' the Corn.'* ]\jaurice discovers that tho ycung lady is the v daughter of Patrick-WelL wood, the stern Presbyterian chaplain of ArdmiJlan's pegins^at >; and when young Raith Ystarts or, a?sj?cret mission on the morrow he carries in his heart the vision in the cornfield of the fair young daughter of the hardy Scot. Unknown to Maurice, however, the chaplain and his pretty dauah'tr also go on a mission to the Camisards, > foment their hostility to the Church. CHAPTERS 111. and IV.-On reaching the generals quarters young Raith hears his name shouted in loud and angrv tones by Lord Marlborough. He is told that the general has been asking for him for the last hour or two, and is fine and angry in consequence, ftaith at once reports himself, and is then given a private commission, with the cheering intimation that if he is successful he will be rewarded, and if rot, ho will be hanged as a spy. Raith starts forth .on his venture disguised as Pierre Dubois, # waggoner. Several new characters are . also introduced to our readers—Sergeant Passy, of 'he 24th Regiment of Grenadiers; Billy Marshall and his wife, Betty; and Phillip Manse, a onetime Protestant.

CHAPTER V.—Maurice Raith has a conversation with Billy Marshal], whom he recognises as a former soldier in his regiment, and determines to use him to the best advantage. As. the Camisards and Cadets alike were famous horse-stealers, young Raith, till he found himself safe in the camp of the Camisard leaders, preferred to stable his horses at the sign of the La Bella Etoile, and guard them himself. CHAPTERS VI., VII.. und VIII.Pierre and his party are captured by the Camisard peasants, "some of whom are for killing them, aud others for sending them to the village for trial. The Camisards ransacked the waggon and helped themselves to the contents. Maurice Raith puts up at the village inn—the Bon Chretien and there makes the acquaintance of the innkeeper and his pretty young daughter, Yvette, who shows young Raith to his apartments. CHAPTER IX. TO LOVE AND TO HATE. The auberge of the Bon Chretien in the village of La Cavalerie, in the district of the Cevennes, held by the rebel Camisards, had on a time been the residence of the ancient prior of the Order of the Monks Templar, who had, indeed, built the wu is and first held possession of the town. The house was situated at the angle of the little Grande Place, and towered above the other domiciles of the vicinity, even thrusting a towered and crenellated crown higher than the walls themselves, which not even the church did, but crouched low and squat, as if protecting itself by its very insignificance from the cannon-balls of the Marechal de Montrevel or his brother officer Guy de Villiers. As usual, the innkeeper was the richest man in the little/ commune, though not for the usual reason. He had not originally belonged to La Cavalerie, but being of the Camisard opinion he had transported himself and his family from the town of Millausome ten years before. It was whispered that his wife, nod dead, had not been equally zealous with himself, and that she had lived long enough to indoctrinate the little Yvette with her opinions. But as to that none knew certainly. This lady had, when she chose, both a pretty and a close-shut mouth of her own.

Maurice's room in the Bon Chretien was •large, and to the English eye somewhat bare. But the flower-wreathed balcony, with its outlook upon white road and grey parapeted wall, made up for all else. In the chamber they found Martin Foy with bis own hands putting tho finishing touches to the arrangements. "You will find your sheas aired," he said, " and there is a bell upon the table which you will bo good enough to ring without the door if you are in need of anything." "But," said Maurice, "this will not do. I am but a poor waggoner of Flanders, ana I have no right nor desire to occupy the best room in the house!"

" Sir," said Martin Foy, bowing gravely, "permit me—for this cause left I the uest

business within th« walls of M3lau!—for t4iis cause counted all but dross that I might x win, Christ, And shall I not give the best room in jny poor house to the man -who, f^uiithig-bot, his" lift* dear, brought the from the StatW'Gcneral of Holland i?to-the poor folk in sore travail on these mountain tops?" , As Martin Foy spoke there came instinctiyely a kind of cbaunt into hisvoice, which Mauvico had learned to recognise as the signmanual of' the Camisard prophet or high preacher. He could distinguish the rani (as he then called it) even under the polished accents of, Jean Cavalier himself. The girl, who had paused at the door of the apartment, stood with her hands behind her j back and an inscrutable expression upon her ; face. Maurice could not tell whether it | was contempt or. merely weariness. At all 1 events it was evident that. Yvette Foy wis j not a willing part of these things. SJI2 j stood listening to her father with a kind of pride and defiant revolt, expressed more ,in of her head and the backward throw of her shoulders than in the expression of her features.

Maurice's room waa wide, and the bet! being, as the custom is in these southern hostelries, retired into a curtained recess, the red-covered sofa and centre table with its drooping cloth might have garnisned the reception room of a general off campaign.

It was twelve o'clock, and from beneath came the sound of a chanted psalm. Martin Foy started, and went rapidly towards tho door.

"It is the hour of prayer." he said. "God forgive me, I had forgotten. WiL you accompany me, and hear the new preacher from Geneva expound, the way? No. You are wearied and would repose. We J, on a futuro occasion he will refresh your heart with such expositions of the true inwardness of Scripture as have never been yet heard upon the Cevennos. I leave you to my daughter. Let .her find you the wherewithal to sustain the body, while I go elsewhere to seek ior the better sustenance of the soul!"

Yvette Foy followed her father with her eyes as he went out through the door. She did not smile. Rather there was an exceeding bitterness in her great, dark eyes. " Let us go out into the clean, wholesome air." she said, " the caterwauling down there will soon be over. Or, rather, tho animals will shut themselves up in their cage!"

Maurice followed her out on the balcony. There was something intensely attractive about this girl. She teemed created ior clluremunet. She walked like some Aho.sh or Ahchban, scarlet-lipped, hthe-hmbtd, ccr tain of her attractive power, a woman against, whom tha prophets oi Israel might have fulminated as against the idolatry of strange gods, Even more she resembled Salome, the daughter of Herodias, as flushed with triumph she went out from dancing before the King. It was a thing wondrous to behold, this innkeeper's daughter in the little Camisard vulage high on the limestone Gausses. Give her but silk for sergeand heels for home-cobbled shoes and there had not been a prouder or a latrer court lady under the raying splendor of the Ceil de Boeuf. The balcony upon which Maurice and Yvette Foy emerged was not proper to his room alone. It went all about the house, except, that is, on the side which overlooked the street. Yvette led the way to the corner where they were most remote from observation, and pointing the young man to a chair, leaned her eibows neg.igently on the iron railing, her chin on her clasped hands. She looked at him as he sat ,down at her bidding. The question which, troubled Maurice was this: " Where gat this girl so much refinement, so much of the air of a court, so much of what can only be learnt in the society of men and women of the world? Not, certainly, in a little village, set close up under the stars and in the sole fellowship of religious fanatics!" She looked up into Ins eyes a long while, steadily, and in spite of himself ho felt bis soul being drawn from him. For so it is when eyes that are great and large have that in them which needeth not speech. " So," she said, slowly, without withdrawing her eyes from his face or allowing the spell to be broken, '* have you come so far for so little?" "For me, I do not know what you mean?" he said, uneasily. But all the same he did not look at her. And Yvetete Foy, the innkeeper's daughter, laughed that low, resonant langit, like the gurgling of water, underground. "No," she said, "it is not hid from me, as you think. It cannot be hid. For I am not as one of the foolish women. I am no ostrich with head in a bag. I see the thing that I «ee! And that thine that baa brought you h-Te is not, hs they think, to bring them a *ew runs, a little powder, and the greeting of their dear friends and the noble allies, who. unlesß it suited them,

would not stretch out so much as their little finger to help if-they were dying of hunger and torture. This js not hid from a man like you—no, nor yet, pray do me the honoT to believe, from ■# woman like me. Oh, I have no patienco with such folly! ' A gun or two and a Kttle powder —a few papers and gew-gawsi : A decoration, mayhap, for our friend Cavalier—and, lo! the poor silly fools are all agog with the hope that next week Marlborough and Piince Eugene will be camping out on the ridge there, and lung Louis and all the marshals of France sleeping on their deep graves! I wonder, sir, that you can le l d } ourself for a moment to such deceit! No, and you would not but that you come whit? I will tell yon for what. To follow that pale pink-arid-white daffi- ; downdilly girl, the daughter of the Genevan pastor. Bah! I know you men. I j could break her across my knee. She j has no heart—she is an icicle, a frozen [ rush from the water edge. She knows j neither what it is to love nor what it is j to hate." | She paused a moment. Her eyes had grown black as night—blacker, indeed, than blackest midnight—the dark pupils seeming to overflow the iris circles so that there was no white left at all. She breathed so heavily that her bosom Tleaved, not tumultuously, but slowly and regularly, yet with a laboring cadenco which touched the young man deeply. " I know both!" she added suddenly, her vo : ce hardly louder than a whisper, and yet far-reaching, like an echo in a great cathedral.

She rose up nuddenly and fronted Maurice, who had hitherto stood entirely silent. He had r.ever met anyone lie this girl before, and for the moment he knew not what to answer. At first, as was natural, hq had thought that she was no more than a lightheaded maid, willing to be made merry with by any well-looking man who should come her way. But already he saw how greatly he was mistaken. "Yes, I know both—to love and to hate.'' she repeated, and as she spoke she slowly approached him where he stood. All about the terrace the creepers were red and purple. The pair were almost wholly h'dden behird thorn, and it is not likely that Yvette Foy would haye cared greatly in any case. Obviously some great excitement had taken hold upon the girl. Her hands worked convulsively, almost, a? it seemed, rh-thmirally with the rise and fal! of her laboring bo?oni. "Listen,"' she said, in the same low. thrilling voice; "I have not spoken to v man—at least, not in this barred prison house—for live months! What are there yammerers to me? God cursed me with ;• soul that would not he contented with hymns and chapters repeated panot-I'ke, or the grunting over of so many prayers a day. Wa« Ito b-ame for that? *Did I weigh myself in scales or construct mv own bodv and foul? Therefore will He be merciful. For I love mv fathpr, and I have none other to clove to—cone of the same s-imnle honesty, that is. Faithfully I have followed his fortunes; bnt at what a cost! Here for me deadness. The white bones of desolation rattle! Do you not hear them, too? You—you !" she seied him with quick, vivid hands that left nervous impressions upon his wrists; "you who come from camps and courts and the society of the living—vou k"ow. These are not my equals. The.v are no companions for me. The horses in the stable are better companv. Thev do not prate. Thev do not prophesy. Thev do not deafen mv ears with misquoted, misunderstood, and misapplied texts!" "But," bepan Maurice, slowly, "is it not possible that after all—that——?" Hfi could rot follow the l ; rrht r 'in<r mood of this rirl. Her fiVstrn? torrent of word like some of her O-'iwenard torrents i: spate-time, carried all before it. She wou'd not. allow him to continue. " I k^ow —T know!" she cried, almos* fiercelv. "You would say that these m" nnd—their women are better than I' Gr.int.ed! You are right. Ti'finitelv better, hisrher. purer. But the Being thev call God mi J f me so. I did not makf mvself. I d'd *o arrautre the of m-- soul that these people could plav nothinc but discords upon it. I mir-ht have b-en like your China of-DresHen maid down there, and seen good in all thirds. 0"ly lam not. It was not so ordained.Mv father serf me to Piris to be educated —finished." Hero she buehed and spread her abroad. '' That was when hj« was rich. The school was a kind of Protestant convent without the dresses and without the maw— c o mllcrj the duller, therefore. Bnt there was another maid in that priso--honse—her name, Eugenie la i Gracieuse. Her father is now in the Marechal Do. MontreveFs armv. And so lone as she remained she and T found a way to most of the restrictions of the place." She paused to let memory run over the leaves of the past.

"I was there four happy years. I saw* the*, great world. I heard men speak—men who were men; men like yon. And at the end of it I came back—to this—to this r ■ ~r . ■ And with.a great sweep of disdain she enclosed with her arm the circle of little high-roofed houses that constituted the fortified village of La Cavalerie. So might, Zenobes the Queen have looked upon the villas of T bur and the white,, flying leaps of the Anio. She looked wondrously lovely to Maurice, this girl—vivid, pitiful, - of an astonishing and mos\ magnetic beauty, flambuoyant in all the bravery of youth and sex, evident as a poppy in a cornfield; no bluet, v.o simple flower, this, but with the something dangerous in her eyes that was infinitely attractive to an adventurous young man like Maurice Raith. Even as she looked, suddenly something seemed to melt in the young man's heart. It appeared to him that he had been sent on special mission" from the preat world to comfort this forlorn girl—educated, made to" taste the pleasure of life, and then torn from them to be pliirtzed in a solitude. Yes, he, Maurice Raith, had obviously been raised up for that purpose. Also, her eyes were certainly wonderful: that olivelskin. at once clear and mit, without polish' of surface or flush of color, save only the won drous lips of cardinal red laid like leaves of autumnal rcar'et upon the ivcry of her face. Above her heaped hair in dark loos? masses, eyes deep ana lustrous! Yes,afte - , all, why should he not? Some mis'ions carry the ; r own particular zral wi'h them, She was standing facing him, and very near There were traces of recent tears in he: eyes. She knew or divined some part (> his story; why should he not tell her tb rest, and achieve one coniiJaat in thisplac of stern religionaries ? Maurice RaitL acted upon by the glamor of those dar eyes which looked so movingly into hi j could think of none.

He made one step toward' her. Yvet' Foy started, and a flush of something li'triumph momentarily reddened her cheet. The moist suffusion of her eyes brimmea over. A tear overwel'ed, globed itself, wa* disengaged, and ran slowly down her cheek Maurice's ri ht arm was about her. He ha~' i kerchief in hi. left hand. He knew not from whence he had obtained it. But hj was wiping away that slowly tricklim Irop. Two great eyes, moist and luminous, ■vere very near. They seemed wells o 'i<:ht now, though in themselv:s so dark. The face was very near. He seemed to rrow dizzy in a mist of perfumed breith The carnation lips were n» t still. The -isjht and thrill of them seemed to swallow

•p all else. When suddenly beneath these two, standing thus, rose the singing note ot a marvellous voice. Maurice let the handk rchief drop. Ho started baik. Yvette Foy, left unsupported, stagyered, and would have fallen, had it not been for the iron of the balcony, which she clasped with both bands Her red lips grew ashen pale with anger The arrow had iallen aude even while it stood quivering in the white. From tbo b;lcony Maurice Raith looked down. It was a child's funeral—a mere babe whose life breath had hardly be n drawn, for whom there had bsen no hold on life, no pain, no merit, no joy, no sin—a God's child, its coming a mystery> its taking wing scarce a grief. First in the procession came the old minister, the late chaplain of Ardmilan'< ragmeut, in his bands and Genevan gown, the Book open in his hand. Then, all clad in white-, fair and tall, like in angel, Flower o' the Corn followed, arrying (as was the custom) the babe in !ier arms, dead, sinlrss, also clad in white. 't was her voice which Maurice had heard, aiding the burial psalm. He was too far tway to hear the words of the French ) alter, but he well rmembsred the tune t was that wh'ch had always accompanied he ancient Scottish words of the hundre" 1 r.d twenty-first psalm, the psalm of j>sured peace and purity. And they rose t his heart and well-nigh to hi" lips as hj itened to the clear voice of Frances Well wood, whom he had caLed Flower # the Com : I to the hills will lift, mine eyes, Prom whence doth come mine aid; My safety comsth from the Lord, Who heaven and earth hath made. Thy foot He'll not let slidej nor will He slumber that thee keeps; Behold, He that keeps Israel He slumbers not nor sleeps. Maurice stood listening to the rise and fall of the melody. They went by close underneath him. The tail old pastor, the slender, wbite-robed girl, the lit'le -hrotided burden in her arms, passed rap'dly acres? the square out of sieht. The mourners followed the father, looking- down with set teeth, the mother bent in grief, her face in her hands. Then plain folks in twos and threes thereafter. Maurice lifted himself up with a certain heave of relief. Manv things, the ima?jnat ; ons of the heart of a man, which had run like a mill race before,

bad grown suddenly still and joyless. He turned on his heel and went out without once looking at Yvette Foy. CHAPTER X- ■ " * A WOHAJI's WITS. Properly speaking, Maurice Raith had as yet no soul. SoiU is like character, a product, or as the Westminster Catethi m so accurately puts jt, a work and no. an act. It is not like life—an emanation. It is not a creation—it is a growth. And more than that, a man's soul is self-made. As a man thinks in his heart, to is he. f'Aiready in childhood the foundations are laid. The site is chosen—moody or cheerful. looking or outlookiug, morose or hearusoaie—the edifice fri,n.;ng one w. y or the. other towards the &un or fiom it. Brick by brick it goes up, storey by itorey, floor by floor, amid clangor anu' clamor like, that tall tower which once on a tune overspied the plains of Shinar. How strong and sure it looks at twenty-one! How massive and impregnab.e at thirty! Yet who can tell? All depends on whuh r or no n is built within t:demark. Are the foundations after all on the sand? Who shall f ay? For the high tide will come—a sudden, far-extending sweep, a recurving of the hol--ow seas, a withdrawing as at Lubon, the returning arch and upward rush, as when ! .hat August day the deadly earthquake | wave ran all about the Strait of Sun.ia, j radiating outward'from Krakatoa as when a J tohe is thrown into the still pool. | The soul of Maurice Raith was tq be early ried. His fates were kind. There was "inae for him to set about laying again the "oundations and building the tower tier upon -<;ier, even if the earthquake wave should Weep all away to one destruction. | ; Now, nothing is more certain than that ilaurice Raith had never known lover. indeed, should he? Love; among i* ther things, is the strife between that which

good and that which is b.tter. A man las many choices of happiness. He may hoose the best batter in his feeding trough. r e may arrange for the best prosp ct of a ontinuance tSereof, for himself and his progeny. This is all and whole, the philosophy of the Swinetiough, as it has been laid down once for all by the celebrated Sauerteig. And very good it is. A great statesman once declared that a man is never more harmies'ly employed than when enaged in making money. But there are other things which strike some men as worthier. There is a, point, ind God send that a man' find it ea T ly in ir's career, when the Swinetrough is nothing to him, and the best Branmash is nothing, when tho Past and the Present and the Future are aothing, when Ancestry an.l Posterity are the fame tiling, so that a man ■nav obtain the One Fit Companionship irink from the One Delectable Cup, possess rhe one thing all precious and desirable. This is the high mystery of the Eden Choice, according to which the Promise is ■tiil to Adam and to his seed after him. This is the eternal sweet in the cup of the Bden bitterness. In the sweat of his brow shall the man do his day's darg. In waging and infinite bitterness shall the woman bring forth. So it is written and so it must be. But this is the divine makeweight flung by the Creator into the Coun-ter-scale. Sweet shall ever be the true Mating of Two—the making of Man and Woman One! Sweet, sweet, so it last as the wise word saith, till d"ath them do part. But in bis present mood this has little to do with Maurice Raith.

Yvette Foy watched Maurice leave the terrace where they had stood so close together beneath the blossoming purple creepers with a smile on her face that was by no means affected. All was not lost be■ause the first coup had somewhat miscarried. She had, however, sufficient knowledge of men to make no further attempt that night. Tit is true that the smile on her face was a bifter one. And as she b"took herself to ber needlework and her book the twin scarlet lips were compressed more tightly than usual, and there was a certain "hard and fixed look about her great, dark eyes. _" A before I did not care 'about him at all," she murmured to herself, " and I do not now. I have other things to live for. But, of all people in the world, she shall not take him from me !" Round a street corner came the far-heard chaunt of the child mourners, the clear voico still leading it, a heavenly instrumeni such as an?els might blow upon. Yvette shrugged her shoulders disdainfully.

. " She does it for effect," she murmured. "The days have been when I have done a' much myself-—(she smiled at the remem hrance)—aye, and may again, if that is tk<way the wind blows. If she chaunts litanies I can sing psalms. She has mad r a captive of Jean Cavalier—so they say—the new prophet—the ex-6aker's "boy of Geneva, who has come among us to deliver Israel from the hands of the Philistines !" It is imno*sibfe to express the fierce b'ttemess with whirh the gTrl spoke. Tk°re was a gleam almost of madness in her eves

—the revolt of a keen and haughty spirit against surroundings more hateful to it than death.. All .countries produce such—the widest Lucretian democracies as well as the strictest theocracies. For, so diverse is the spirit of man, and so wayward a.so, that it.h enough t that ' the word should „ ga' forth "Grow thou thus and thus!" for some to yearn and strain to fill some other place and grow in ano.her fashion. But perhaps in all times rebsls have been most common in the sternest and sirictesi theocracies. Rome, Geneva, nnd th" Martzburg have all experienced the difficulty—the company of Jesus and ths company of the Jesuits alike. Oaths and promses are proverb ally of the nature o, p.eciust, <vnd made to be broken. Indeed, they curry interest in the desire to break them. Yet v to do her justice, it was only when such a one as Maurice Raith came in her way that Yvette Foy let hen el'.' go". She. had a philosophy of her own in this as in all things. She had too great a contempt for ths Camisard peasants who surrounded her, in spite of the fact that their midnight I marches and sudden assault were making all Europe ring w th their fam>, to lit so much as an eyelash upon them Not even young Jean Caval er, h.inds:me, wise, | courtly, polished, could move her. • She was j no ordinary country maid, this daughter of | the innkeeper of La Cavaleiie. Indeed, it .was her chief sin. that &he held heTself so far aloof from common clay—her misfortune too.

" I have the misfortune to be born, of the pea : ant party," she said, "but there is n need that I should mix with them. I will pray with them, watch with them, en aire long sermons with them. But I will not love them, talk with them, hold comradeship with them. They shall have my company just as little as my b.rthright and my father's business permit. And aoubles3 in good time there is a way out. If not by "this young Englishman, why, by another! Not for naught was I given' such a face as that which I sec in the glass yonder, on the day when mais were dealt out by (he divine prcpsrty man." And as she spoke she looked at a little mirror of greenish glass, opposite to which she always sat when at work, and which in a manner of speaking constituted £er pne-Dieu and holy of holies. Yvette hid also a secret storehouse of books locked saftly away in an empty escritoire—bo .k' which had been stnt h'er by Eugenie la Gracieuse, her friend of the Parisian school This private library included amon st other the " Grand Cyrus," " Clelie," a nd the latest volumes of the dictionary of Bayle—strange books to be found in the escritoire of a Camisard girl in a village standing upon its defences in the wids of the Cevenn.s. From these she had learned the language of Marly and Versailles. Though still to outward appearance a poor girl, her mind dwelt constantly with dukes and prints. She walked the narrow corridors of th° Bon Chretien as if they had been the halls of the Hotel de Pambouiliet itself. It would have been hard to find within the wide limits of France a maid more thoroughly our. of key with her life and surroundings than Yvette Foy. Add to this the girl's striking and fa'al beauty, her own perfect knowledge of theses to which that beauty mieht be put, and an early resolve to make a way for herself at all co*ts out of her uncongenial surroundings, and the result could not fail to be dangerous b'th to herself and to the peace of mind of eligible young men coming within fcer sphere.

To do her justice, however, it was not the nature of Yvette Foy to sit down and cry over the spilling of miik. If the chance were gone, would she sit down and weep? On the contrary, she would serenely betake herself to the work of preparing anoth r. At one time before she left Mil'au she had a passion for birds and animals, and her various admirers would have filled the house with pet dogs and squirrels, if such had been her desire. As it was, however, she had a pet squirrel upon whose escape and ungrateful refr-sal to return she spent more tears than all her lovers together had caused her to let fall. So Yvette Foy sat musing npon theyoun" Englishman who had left her. She bore him no malice for his sudden departure—indeed, less than ;he had done the squirrel. ''Well, better luck next time," she had said, with a shrug of her shoulders. " You can hardly expect to win every trick of the game, pretty Mistress Yvette. But no more will the Mik-and-water Girl—that is one comfort. For so she named Flower o' the Corn as often as she thought of her. She hummed a gay, careless tune learned in Paris.

I go carry a hymn book—sing psalms—take short steps demvrelv—abase mine eyes upon the ground? Oh,*l could do it.—Yes, I have done it before," so she meditated. <L And if I judge rightly, the^e things are not what this young man loves a firm grip of the hand, a bold meeting eye, not too much, forward, but as a man' to a

man. These will take him, so be that he is worth the taking." She had a knitting pin in her mouth part of the time during which she occupied herself with this, analysis of chancts. Her eyes did not once leave hit work;;; She miD.ht have.been a demure ivJlage Martha so long as-she let her eyelashes be quiet upon her cheek. But thoughts and in ents alien Ito La Cavalero were stirring in-her heart. She smiled as she saw, loo'.ing out at the window, Maurice Raith stri.ie away acros the l.ttle open square of the village, and ro«nd the newly-rebuilt fortifications of 1h? Knights Templar. He walked fast, as if he would thus d-sengage himself from troublesome thoughts. Yvette laughed, a little,.low laugh .all.to herself, very pleasant to hear, it was so full of good humor and mirthful appreciation of the circumstances. ■ " He must walk fast who would get away from that irfaction!" ste-murmured. And then., be'ore dropping'her'head again upon* her seami she glanced at the daik, piqu n beauty of her face in the little green mirror. •To be continued.) ..