FLOWER OF THE CORN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12070, 13 September 1902, Page 3 (Supplement)

FLOWER OF THE CORN.

'PUBLISHED BY SPK3IAL ARRANGEMENT.

BY 8. I. CROCKETT. author of " The Riders." "The Grey Alan •' The Black Dongas," " Lilac Sunbonnet," " Sweetheart Travellers," etc.. etc.

CHAPTER Vll.— (Continued.)

But Yvette did :ot run away. She sat and mused, lookkg at her husband the ', while. Presently.as with a quick impuLs, she caught the old-braided edge of Vs uniform, and die- him towards her. /Ie stood looking fancy down upon her. Vith her other hand shi reached up and capsed the rough grizzle thind his ear. / " Of course I canot help yon, can-"'" she id. " They 6a two heads an better than one, but mines such a poor jffair!" '• You would no Lave this yiung man ■<Jie:" de Moufrevelasked. Yvette gave vento a little potting shudder, infinitely expre.ive. It disclaimed any personal interest intfaurice Rath. It expressed a general diste to the death penalty when carried out inoo close proximity to the dwelling of a mshal's wife, and in, addition it declared aonviction that if the matter were only committed to her she, Yvette de Baume, ne Foy, Alareehale de Montrevel, would at oce please the King, satisfy her husband's honour, and—incidentally, save the votg man's life. Now Yvette Foy coululo nothing simply. In the simplest actions.{ life her motives were complex. Even innarrying her husband and in taking her jsition as Madame le Marechale the arrangment wis redeemed from the charge of being simply mercenary by Yvette's sdden disiovery that she loved her husbatl. j

Nevertheless there was i twist it the girl's nature which made ho bitterly nsent the happiness of another—especially that of one who had made her, fir ever so aort a time, feel the prick of jeabusy. Moreover had not Maurici Raith bee. in her toils? She had ear-marked him. So indeed, had she done with Cavalier, nit, that was different. Jean Cavalier bred her still. Maurice. Raith ha.l had the mdacity to love another. Still worse,ito tell her so. No, Maurice Raith should not. be shot'or a spy. if she could help it. That was lot a pretty ending to any love-tale, howcer transient. But neither should he may Flower o' the Corn. What was therein the girl at any rate'.' Pretty— pertyps in an insipid fashion. Men raved abut her. Yes, again— who had lust kisod their mothers. Frances Wellwood skflld go back to Scotland and marry ix parso — a pa tor like, her father. That was wat she was fib for.

And Maurice Raithwell, she would ?e. At all events he should not marry the nik-aud-water girl. So much had been arranged for him in the book of Fate—edied and arranged by Yvette Foy, Marechal de Montrevel, vice Providence, superseded. So it came to pass that Yvette Foy ad, : what she loved most on earth (next to he more refined sins), a difficult problem to solve. She had that sort of brain wbch works best -uheu surrounded by difficult**, when one problem after another is preserved far solution, and of which the net reiilt must I)*> translated into terms of install, vigorous, and delicate action. By means of an intermediary in Miiau Yvette kept up a constant correspondence with certain friends in the Camisard vill.ges, and it was indeed by h?r means that he marshal knew everything which went on there. He was, for instance, aware of the fact that Jean Cavalier was still leiug nursed by Catinat, and that though pnMiely deposed from authority ".here was »■ numerous party among the younger men favourable to his plan of makng a submission to the King, and of raising Cevenol regiments to the northern battefields to fight against the King's eHemies. It only remained therefor? for Yvette to close her combinations and 'sring Cavalier, and those who adhered to bin, to the camp of the marshal in the valley <f Millati. Xow it hardly needs <lo ba said that Yvette was the complete l'amituriere born and bred, which is someling essentially different from our English I'adventuress. She had attained all that ai adventuress could hope —a husband whom she loved, a high position, the. sort of societ; in which she was best suited to shine•sh* who had been but the innkeeper's daughter of La Cavalerie. But Yvette was the ;rue aventuriere pursa.ig—she loved adventure for itself alone, not for what it would bring her. • She. declared her willingness to retire with her husband to his woods anc country houses, his tree-planting and hedge-pruning. She would have wearied of them in a fortnight, and begun to sigh for the spice and movement of the camp, the gaily-dressed officers, the change, movement, uacertainty, the admiring eyes which followed her, return glances keen as rapiers, soft as honey in the comb, above all the knowledge that she was appreciated—in short, the things which made lite worth living. She had them. But the adventure drove her with whips. It was not intrigue so much that she cared for but the love of change, of power— the need of action which stimulated a nature changeful and brilliant as the neck of a j.beas int or the heart of an opal. So it need not surprise any who have followed the career of Yvette Foy thus far that on the third night after ha' husband had shown her the King's letter she was to he found (had there been any to find her) wrapped in a hooded cloak, and in a peasant woman's dress, making her way in the direction of La Cavalerie. by the steep path up which she hid passed and repassed so manv times. Yvette had waited only till her husband was safe in the great tent with his officers, engaged in those interminable military discussions of sieges and counter-marches of which the land service never seems to weary. She herself had told de Montrevel that she was tired and would go to her own room early. In her case she knew that he would sit half the night with his colonels and stall, and that she would not be disturbed till the next morning. Though the spring was corning the nights were yet long. >iid Yvette had good reason to hope that she might be able to make the double journcv in" time to lie back for the marshals breakfast hour. in any case she had told her maid not to call her before eleven. Only to Flower 0' the Cora did she reveal her intention of visiting Le Cavalerie. She told her how that the fact that she had revived no news from her lather recently tilled her with the deepest anxiety. She could bear ii, no longer. She must go and find out. and if she had not returned by eleven the next morning she was to go in person to the marquis and reveal the cause of his wife's absence to him. So it was with a feeling akin to elevation that Yvette found herself away from the camp and out upon the naked bareness of the limestone. The lights of the great military tent twinkled immediately beneath her. Farther awav she could see a faint single illumination,"which she knew to be the win-dow-light of Flower o' the Com. "She will be saving her prayers!" she said, with a brief, bitter smile— a grimace, which, however, was neither hatred nor envy but rather the involuntary homage which a, godless woman pays to one who believes as a woman should. There was a kind of sadness in the exclamation too, for prestntlv she sighed a little and said, " Once —I could have said mv prayers with the best of them—ah, once. Am I worse now than then?—l wonder"'" Then as she turned her face towards the great mass of the Larzac above her, all blanched in the bleaching moonlight, placid, stills windless, the long shadows of the boulder-splinters projected across the winddried crumble of the soil took hold on her with a vivid sense of pleasure. She drew a long breath. "After all, what matter':" she said. "Things happen to me. Or—if of themselves they do not happen 1 will make them happen! "I had rather be a gipsy wife and trudge it along the highway than like Eugenie, bond-slave and maid of honour to Madame Scarron, Mother Superior of the Royal nunnery !" "Still," she" said to herself as she maue her way upwards "I own that 1 would like to walk once' in the Ceil de Beuf— once, with M. Le Due d"Orleans and—my husband looking on." ft was the fullest, full of the moon and a glorious night. The turn of the year had «* usual brought vast crenellated clouds into U*. Xiy, the bastions and towers ef some

'J I Titanic archi£ uie- These sometimes revealed, son/™ es concealed the moon as I they drifte/ as galleons of Spain upon a sea of gla?. 1 " 0111 one side of the black hemisphere o/"£&fc to the other. The /face of the Causse (once Yvette had alined to the higher levels) spread .. out b° re her » plain as the palm of a hand, save* r those curiously characteristic rocks, ap/ently without connection with the undoing rock, which stand up like icej i/gs out of the sea, irregular, pinnacled jyie debris of temples destroyed or ever . foot of man foil there—spires, gargoyles, /Hideous monsters, all dejected by some unutterable catastrophe, and become more horrible in the moonlight, or modified to the divine calm of the Buddho himself, by some effect of illumination or trick of cloud iimbration. And across this, without pause, quickfooted, self-reliant, well armed,, Yvette took her way. Her heart beat faster indeed, but it was with an excitement wholly pleasurable. She feared the lurking shapes or the primeval monsters no move than the casual sheep which, having escaped from the flocks, had hidden away in order to crop the grasses of the coming springtime in the sheltered valleys, where a few patches of melting snow, with snowdrops and the small cruciform gentian, blue as turquoise (or a splotch of the sky), along their margin, formed an irresistible temptation, i A wonderful land this of the Gausses, where the rain never comes to stay. It might as well rain on a vast, dry sponge, thirty miles across and four or five thousand feet in height. The sheep up there never drink. They only eat the tender grass sparsely when the dew is upon it, and from their milk, too, for ordinary purposes, the curious cheese called Roquefort is madewhich, kept long in cool limestone cellars (the cellules of the stony sponge) puts on something of the flavour of the rock plants, thyme, juniper, dwarf birch, honey-sweet heath, of which it was made. But of all this, and concerning all the lives, true and loyal, that had been passed there—Hougenot and Catholic, Camisard and Cadet of the Cross— Yvette did not trouble her head. All was the same to her. The world, as it seemed to the active brain which lay behind the white brow with its fringe of dark locks, was a spiders' world, made up of excellent good webs, laid for the cunningest purposes, or sometimes of a summer morning sent wavering through space for the mere joy of producing them. Often they came to nothing—the fly escaped, the net. was broken. It had come in contact with the Superior Power —a. man. a, horse, anything I which are as mysterious to Spiderdom as God and Providence are to us, tearing rudely away that which had cost so much of thought and effort to produce. Yvette, the spider, could not help her nature. She was again laying her webs in the moonlight as she took her way to La Cavalerie. .lean Cavalier was the name of the —a good fly enough, an active fly. Once he had been in the toils before. In a sen<e lis* was so still. But (with a sudden sense of disappointment the thought came to her) he showed symptoms of escaping or perhaps, more exactly, of becoming her husband's fly, not hers. She took no interest in her husband's flies. But though her eyes were acute, her senses vivid, yet there was that abroad upon the face of the waste that night whose facilities were infinitely keener, more alert than hers. Back there was a shape which had Yvette only stopped quick enough, she might have seen stand still, instantly turned to stone, between two blocks as bizarre in appearance as itself, or turning, she might have caught a shadow flitting silentfooted as a cloud patch across the waste. From boulder to boulder the thing glided. always following closely, always upon her track yet never approaching too near nor yet permitting the girl to get so far away that one swift rush would not bring pursuer and pursued face to face. How many turn their heads journeying across the wilderness when there is no pursuer? On the other hand, how many also are tracked, step by step, from refuge to covert, by a Fate whose footfall is never heard, whose presence never noted? The thing that followed Yvette was of human form, and ran swiftly, but even had she turned and seen it would instantly have stood so still upon the plain, which was strewn with a myriad of rocks of all shapes, that she might easily have taken it for one of the strange and weird boulder shapes which cumber the vast tableland of the Larzac. Yvette, however, her mind full of her mission, went on her way following the track mechanically, where, across the waste, great wooden posts are set up, gaunt and grey, to mark the highway through the cumbering snows of winter. At length the walls of the little Templar town, the entrenched citadel of the Camisard rebels, could be discerned upon the highest roof of the Larzac. The first low trenches could hardly be seen. They were sunk behind the dykes and hedges with which Cavalier had cut up the ground to afford shelter to his troops. It was interesting to note the method of Yvette Foy's homecoming. Nothing of uncertainty-— of fear marked her approach to her ancient dwelling-place. On the contrary, her foot took a more certain spring, her limbs a new swiftness of motion, as she came close to the walls of La Cavalerie. .Anion:: the many and grave faults of Mistress Yvette that- of miserliness had no place. The lively lady was no niggard. Therefore she was well served as to her intelligence department. At the advance posts she had the password ready, sign and countersign, just as Catinat had arranged them. She went straight to the gatehouse, till tenanted by old Elise, who "had remained in the dirt of her unused apartments, like an old hen " clutched" in. the summer dust under a bank, ever since the departure of Flower o' the Corn. A!, the outer lines the flitting phantom which had accompanied Yvette across the was*:e of grey stones stopped suddenly—not. as it appeared, because the trendies and sentinels presented any particular difficulty, but solely because, having convoyed the girl so far. its mission was ended. Yvette tapped lightly on a window which still remained lit on the first storey with one of the long-dried reeds of which the rude garden fence was constructed. All was done easily and naturally, as if it had been an action of long custom. But there was that within the house of old Elise that night which had some need of secrecy. All indeed was dark and grim to the outside view. But when once the door had been opened in response to the word which Yvette spoke in a low tone the gill found herself in a swarming nest of young male humanity. "Is Jean Cavalier here'.'" she said, softly, as she entered. "Not yet," said the frowsy old woman, whose fondness for strong liquors perfumed the whole house, and even sent strays of floating eau-de-vie out athwart the path of the passing traveller. Cavalier was late that night, she grumbled, It was not his customs but. as Catinat still kept an eye upon him he had to be careful. Soon, however, when her good lads got to work there would be no more Catinats, haling poor, honest old women before the justicars and elders of the village—elders, indeed, some of them no better than they should be. for all their gravity. Ah, the tales she could tel!—an' she would—an' she would!" Whereupon Madame Elise sat down and wept with feeble copiousness, because she was a forlorn old woman who had no friends and had drunk rather more eau-de-vie than was good for her. Yvette turned up her pretty nose at this, but did not answer, nor indeed take very much notice of her words. She talked apart with this one and that of the young men. to whom she assumed the mode of speech of a Camisard who had faced things and knew (what she was anxious that they also should acknowledge) that there was no hope for them or their country save in submitting to the King. . At last there was a general stir. The door opened, and a young man of a pale conn tenance cam* in leaning heavily upon a staff. , , . "It- is he!" The general whisper went round, and all men's faces grew brighter, their manner more assured. % _ Yvette stood up to greet the leader, throwing back her hooded cloak suddenly. The lamplight shone upwards on her clearlined, dark face, flushed with the long exercise in the chill air. Her lips were scarlet and her hair mere filmy wisps of night. The young man's staff fell clattering to the floor "Yvette!" he. cried, with a gasp, clutching with his hands at the empty *ir e

_ And he would have fallen had not the gill held out her arms.

As she laid him gently hack on a wooden settle over which a coverlet had hastily been flung she smiled to herself.

"Good." she said, ''this will make it easier. He loves me still 1"

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE EASY DESCENT OF AVKIUNTI-:. It wos true. It did make it easier—for Yvette. As to Cavalier, there is an old proverb of every-day application, which concerns the making of beds and the lying upon them, which as a, matter of course puts him outside the reach of pity. AH the same there are sins deeper dyed in crimson and scarlet which have more of the world's tolerance than those of poor Jean Cavalier. " I am here," said Yvette, as soon as Cavalier had come to himself, " to take you to the King. The interview is all arranged. You have, I see, your men about you. Any that are wanting I can help you "to recruit from the sturdy fellows who are every day flocking in to the standard of the Marechal de Montrevel. They will be delighted to serve under so famous a leader. So doubt not that all will come to our desire." Cavalier carried his hand uncertainly to his brow, with the dazed look of one "who has fallen from a great height or lias been stricken treacherously from behind. " 1 hold him !" she murmured, in her own quick, expressive French, in which the phrase means more than the translation of the words into English convey. Yes, he was her own, haltered and hand- , cuiTed, to do with as site would. And her purposes with her prisoner were indeed very definite. First of all she must get him down to the camp of Millau, and to that she was now directing her energies. Two methods commended themselves to ncr thought— Cavalier's men might straggle away secretly, uniting at tho camp below, or they might march out of La Cavalerie, pretending a raid on some neighbouring Catholic villages. On the whole, however, Yvette preferred the latter, both because they could then enter the camp at Millau with more eclat and, besides, they would be enabled to protect. dean Cavalier on his way down. As for Yvette, the aveuturiere, that, little woman never for a moment doubted her power to protect herself. Cavalier sat near her in the upper chamber of the date Tower, to which there still clung a certain odour of cloves and eau-de-vie, the special bouquet of Elise, the aged. 'the young man did not seem able to remove Ids eyes from her face. He had thought that the spell was broken, but he was now fatally to discover his mistake. As in a dream he listened to Yvette giving her commands to the men who had cast iu their lot with him, and declared their willingness to follow hiin alone over the world. '"And do you two," she spoke to two lads who stood shyly together iu. a corner, "go and find a couple of horses for us to ride upon. It is necessary that J. should lie back before the day. I do not choose to return with you, and' Cavalier here cannot, as you men can. find his way to Millau at, a. wolf's trot! Haste you, then. Bring the horses!" Madame." said one of the young men. the son of Castanet, a noted leader of the Camisards. of the elder and more sober faction, " it is not so easy to find two horses in La Cavalerie at such short notice and especially to get them beyond the barriers without any questions being asked." " No matter." she answered, imperiously, "you must do it. I say so!" And. though formerly she had been to them but Yvette Foy, the daughter of the innkeeper of La Cavalerie, such a. vivid beauty and air of natural command, perhaps also such a fascination of the flesh and the pride of life, disengaged themselves from her that the two young men saluted without a single other word spoken, and went out on their quest. ■With a long sigh she laid her hand, palm downwards, on that of Jean Cavalier. " Now we will wait a little tiil they have time to obey me!" Now it seemed even to Cavalier that something had indeed departed from him. The word was no loHger with him. The ]lower to speak and to be obeyed had tied. True, the men whom he had commanded in war, ten against a thousand, who had seen him a hundred times in the van of a forlorn hope or cheering them on with words of hope on bis lips as they dashed at their enemy in the grey, breaking dawn, still clave to him. They did not know (what Jean Cavalier himself knew) that the man they worshipped was dead. A woman had taken the life out of him, and only the outer shell remained of all that had been Jean Cavalier—the man who, like Enoch, had walked with God, and had been to his fellow-men as a god. The horses went stumbling down the steep descent into the valley of the Tarn. The snow had everywhere disappeared, and the whole Causse was warm and breathing with the coming of spring. Here and there in the clefts there was a deep deposit, from which the airs blew clean and cool as from an icehouse. The moon had sunk behind great and threatening clouds, and the face of the Larzac loomed up sombre and dark. The dissident Camisards had escaped with ease from the gatehouse. They were, they had given out, going to Saint Veran to bring back word from the sister village, and to see if anything had been heard there of Martin Foy, whose hostelry of the Bon ; Chretien had (to the great grief of the faith- i ful) been practically closed since the disappearance of its master. Whether the ease with which the exodus was effected was accidental or the contrary may have some light thrown upon it by a conversation which took place behind certain rocks, advantageously placed so as to command the whole of the approaches from

the direction of Millau, as it were both the " oiitgate" and the " ingate" of the village. Two men stood there, one wrapped in a Caussenard cloakthe herdsman's cloak of grey or black wool, which, when the man is young is sometimes dyed of a bright blu* —but in this case of the most sober grey His companion, whose long, unkempt, grey locks fell over his eyes and streamed on his back, wore only the ordinary blouse and knitted trunks of the workman, shoeless and without headgear, his beard worn thin and straggling, the eyes piercing and restless almost to the -point of madness, answered the questions of the Camisard in the herdsman's cloak and the ordinary weapons of a fighting Brother of the Way. " You are sure that you saw her, Martin?" said the herdsman, laying his hand on the man's shoulder, from which the blouse hud been partially torn away. '• Shall the father forget the child, even it he have prepared death and slaughters for her—-aye, and for those with whom she hath chosen to company?" said Martin Foy, " Of a surety it was my daughter and none —the cockatrice whom J have hatched, the scorpion'that hath nested La my bosom!" "And where is she now?" said Catinat, who, with his shepherd's cloak over his arm, stood back in the gloom of the great boulder behind which the two had concealed themselves. The father of Yvette Foy pointed with his band to the gatehouse, "There," be said, "there —is she who has come amongst us to flaunt the golden taches of her gorgeous apparel. But in the revenues of the wicked is trouble, .sure and sudden. In the one net will 1 take her and him who hath caused her to be a taunt and a cursing, a by-word and a reproach among the nations." Now, Catinat himself could out-Herod , Herod at this sort of denunciation, but now he wanted information, so without scruple he cut. the man short. " And there are with whom?" , The face of Martin Foy took on an ex- . pression so bitter and wicked that even stout Catinat was afl'rayed. "The man is certainly mad," he thought, " but then in the meantime he is useful!" The young and the foolish," he an- , | swered. " The sons of men that are highi est in place amongst usnot your a.nd mine, ! Abdias Maurel, because (praise be to the '[ Highest!) we have none to be led astray by i a pleasant, flattering tongue!" I "' Yonder." he pointed with his hand to- ' wards the gatehouse, "yonder in the dwelling of the old wineskin Flise, mother of harlots, are gathered all such as dance to , the pipe and the psaltery, such as for the tempting of the flesh, make sweet melody , all such as love beauty and favour above , the word of the Lord." , I He. shook both hands abroad with an inj deacribable gesture of hopelessness.

"But what would you? Corn when it 13 green, green and bursting— berries that are not ripe, pulse green in the pod, berries that fill not the husk—ah," here he fell into a kind of chaunt, "What Raith the wise man, ' Keep a sure watch over a shameless daughter, lest she make thee a laugh-ing-stock to thine enemies, a by-word in the city. Behold not the bodv's beauty, nor sit in the midst of women. For out of garments cometh a moth, and from women wickedness! Better a churlish man than a courteous jvomaii—a courteous woman who bringeth only shame and reproach !" "Hush, man, "hush!" said Catinat, putting his hand over the wild man's mouth. " Heed not what is said of another by another. This woman is your own daughter, all of your kin that is left, to you.,_ Shall a man destroy bis own flesh, but nourish 1 and cherish it?" "Bah," cried Martin Fey, tossing back his locks dank with the dews of night, "if she be my daughter according to the flesh what then did Jephthal ? Did Lot delay to flee from destruction because of his unfaithful wife? Or did Jehu turn aside his foot from treading upon Jezebel beneath the window in Jezreel because, forsooth, she was the daughter of a king? Kay, verily, her blood spurted against the wall, and the dogs cracked her bones in the gutter at sundown. And so be it with all wicked daughters !" At which Catinet, old veteran of the wars as he was, whose ears had heard many things besides the crash of cannon, shud- | dered as he listened. But he did not again try to mollify the madman's hate. ; "It is well," lie said, nodding, "or at least it is your own affair, but tell me for , what cause are so many of our young men : gathered together?" i " You call yourself a captain in Israel, and I you know not that?" cackled the maniac. "It is only that she who was—my daughter —may lead them down to the King's camp in Miilau, as fools are led to the correction of the stocks !" Catinat caught him by the wrist. "Why then did not you tell me before?" he said, fiercely, " this must be stopped, and instantly. I will go call our the guard. These treacherous persons shall see that there are still faithful men—true Brothers of the Way, m La Cavalerie !" The madman caught him by the thick tail of his sheepskin cloak as he tamed hurriedly awe. "Are all captains fools'.'" he said fiercely, " have they no heads given to them save those of cabbages? Hath Cod bereft them all of wits in making of them prophets? Prophet forsooth! Listen! How many, flunk you. of these young men are the sons of those whom you call' true Brethren of the Way?' All—l tell you ail ! Ami how many of these fathers would put the knife to the throat of the unfaithful first-born who aro there assembled? 1 will 1 ell you. One only ! And his name ! Why. .Martin Foy !" The wild man laughed uncontrollably. "Ah. I must watch for you. Sieur Catinat," lie continued, "and it is hard enough these bitter nights, with the white fog of the. earth-frost, which sets old teeth on edgo and old bones on the rack. But do I complain? Have you hoard a complaint from MariainFoy? But must I also think for von, Abdias Maurel. whom the folk call Catinat? No, nolet them go—down, down— into the camp of the King. I will go with them. They shall not escape from me! There is no knife in the world so sharp as that, of Martin Foy? He sharpened it, upon his own skin. Feel!" He held up the stile of his foot, and to calm him the other put down his baud to touch the place. ' " There." he cried, "therewhat think you of that? Was there ever whetstone like to that? And the knife. It would divide an ox's neck at one blow (given slowly with a. draw, as I alone know how), or take the. dark fine hairs off the swan bill upper lip of —of my lady daughter!" And the maniac sent peal after peal of weird laughter across the waste, till in fear that the alarm would be given prematurely Catinat sprung upon him and placed bis hands across his mouth. "Hush, fool!" he hissed, " do you want to spoil all?" The wild'man of the Gausses checked himself and wagged his head. " —no," he said, more calmly, "I will be sage, I forgot. lam apt to forget nowadays. But the mirthfulness of it tickles a man's midriff. They are all so clever young men, the King's fine scarlet officer, Cavalier the prophet, and more than all (choke me again if I laugh!), my dear lady Jezebel, who hath sot up her altars tipcri every high hill, and done her abominations beneath every green tree!" He took his laugh out in a. gurgling rap. tuie. So if was upon the advice and observance of a. certain mad fellow, named Martin Foy, sometime landlord of the hostelry of Hie Bon Chretien in La Cavalerie, that the troop of discontented and disaffected among the Camisards was permitted to take their way in safety down to the King's camp in Millau. "And so once more." said Catinat. at the meeting in the old hall of the Templars, when he explained his action, "the folk of the way are purged from those that devise iniquity! Are yo content?"' And albeit there were many sore of heart fathers and —among that assemblv they responded all with one voice. "We are with you. Abdias Mantel—with you to the death—only for certain of these'things our old eyes are dim ! Pardon ns! ' (To be continued.)