"YOU WILL NEVER FIND HIM."

"When you and your charge, Mademoiselle Ducaire, have left us you will betray no secrets," Cavalier had said to Martin, as they stood side by side watching the army of Montrevel on its way through the province? Yet some weeks passed, and still they remained in the hands of the Camisards, well treated, yet still there.

For their accommodation two large caverns had been prepared as sleeping rooms; prepared, too, in such a manner as would indeed have astonished the Camisards' enemies, the dwellers in the valleys below, had they been able to observe them. To observe that Urbaine's chamber--if such a name could be given to the vault in which she slept--was furnished not only with comfort, but indeed luxury, her bed, which had been constructed expressly for her by one of the attroupés who was a carpenter, being covered with fine white linen and made soft with skins and rugs. Also the sides of the vault were hung with tapestry and brocade; the ewer from which she poured water was solid silver; the floor on which she trod was covered with carpets made at Aubusson. Yet the girl shuddered as, nightly, daily, she glanced round this luxuriously furnished cavern, knowing full well, or at least being perfectly able to divine, whence all these things came; for none who had ever knelt, as Urbaine had done since her earliest recollection, at the altar of any church of the Ancient Faith could doubt that that silver jug had been torn from some such altar which had been devastated with the edifice itself; none who had seen the luxurious fittings and adornments of the noblesse of Languedoc could doubt that the tapestries and hangings and rich fine linen had once adorned the chateau of Catholic noblemen or gentlemen. Everything which surrounded her, all--even to the choice plate off which they both ate their meals, and the crystal glass from which they drank the Ginestoux and Lunel placed before them--told the same story; the story of robbery and pillage, of an awakened vengeance that spared nothing and hesitated at nothing.

Both, too, were free now, free to wander on the mountain slopes, no parole being demanded, since escape was impossible through those closely guarded paths and defiles, a little mule being at the girl's service when she chose to use it, an animal which had been captured from Julien's forces during a defeat sustained by him and while bearing on its back two mountain guns. Now those guns guarded, with other captured cannon, one of the approaches from the valley, and the mule was given over entirely to her service. Yet she rarely rode it, preferring, indeed, to sit upon a high promontory whence, at sunset, she could see the spires of distant cathedrals or churches sparkling far down in the valley, sometimes with Martin by her side, sometimes alone.

"Monsieur," she said to him now one crisp, sunny October afternoon as together they strolled toward this promontory to watch the sunset, "monsieur, why do you not go away, return to your own land? You will have the chance soon to escape out of France forever. You heard what the chief said last night, that an English agent was at N?mes endeavouring to discover what chance the fleet in the Mediterranean will have of invading us there."

"You forget, mademoiselle. I am in their power; you forget that----"

"Nay," she exclaimed, "why speak thus? I know that you are free to go to-morrow, to-night; that you might have gone long since had you chosen. That you remain here only because you will not leave me alone in their power. I know, I understand," and the soft, clear eyes stole a glance into his.

"I saved you once, by God's mercy," he said. "I shall not leave you now. Not until I return you to your father's arms. And take heart! It will not be long. Whether Montrevel or my countrymen effect a landing from the sea, you will be soon free. If the former happens, it will be a rescue; if the latter, you will be detained no longer, since they deem you beyond all doubt a Protestant."

"The woman was mistaken," she answered. "It is impossible."

"Yet Cavalier thinks he has confirmation of the fact. You know that he has been in the valleys lately, even in Montpellier, disguised. He has met one, an old woman, who knew Monsieur Ducaire, your real father. You know that?"

"She has said so, yet I deem it impossible. Who is this woman?"

"She will not say. But he seems confident. And--and--even though my religion is so hateful to you--think, think, I beseech you, of what advantage to you it is to be deemed here one of our faith. Mademoiselle, if that strange seer, that prophetess whose knowledge astounds, mystifies me, had not proclaimed you one of them and a Protestant, you would have been dead by now," and he shuddered as he spoke.

"You wrong me," she said, "when you say that the Protestant--that your--faith is hateful to me. It is only that I have been taught from my earliest days to believe so strongly in my own, to regard nothing as true but that. Also," she continued, "because it is yours, the religion of you who have saved me, it could never be hateful to me."

And as she spoke the soft rose-blush came to her cheek and her eyes fell. To her, and to Cavalier, Martin Ashurst had given a full account of himself, concealing nothing, and at last not even hesitating to avow himself an Englishman, a fact which, if known in any other part of Louis' dominions but this Protestant and rebel stronghold, would have led to his instant destruction. For England was pressing France sorely now, trampling her under the iron heel of the vast armies headed by Marlborough, attacking her on every coast she possessed, even now sending a fleet under Sir Cloudesley Shovel to attempt a landing at Cette and Toulon to succour and aid the Huguenots. Also it was to her principally that France's cruelly-used subjects had been fleeing for years, by her that they had been warmly welcomed and humanely treated. What hopes of anything short of a swift and awful death could an Englishman hope for at this time if caught in France?

Yet that he was safe in telling Urbaine Ducaire who and what he was he never doubted, even though she, in her turn, should tell Baville; for, since he meant himself to restore her to Baville's arms, it was not too much to suppose that this restoration would cancel the awful crime, in the eyes of the man who cherished this girl so, of being a British subject.

Also he had told both of what had brought him to Languedoc--his quest for the last of the de Rochebazons--and of how that quest had failed up to now, must fail entirely, since it was impossible that any investigations could be carried on in the distracted state of the province at the present time. Nor did Cavalier, whose mind would have better become a man of forty than one of twenty, give him any encouragement to hope that he would ever find the man he sought.

"For, figurez vous," he remarked, "this land, this sweet, fair Languedoc, has been a prey to dissension, slaughter, upon one side only up till now" (and he laughed grimly as he spoke, perhaps at the change which had come about), "to misery and awful wrongs for how long? Long before this present king--this Dieudonné, this Roi Soleil--came to the throne, and when his father Le Juste was harrying our fathers. Le Juste!" he repeated with bitter scorn, "Le Juste! A man who had a hundred virtues that became a valet--witness his love for shaving his courtiers, for larding his own fillets of veal, for combing his mignon's wigs--and not one that became a master, a king, except dissimulation! My God! he had that royal gift, at least. You know what he and that devil incarnate, Richelieu, did here in the south, did at Rochelle?"............