What the priest said I do not know, for he spoke in patois, but the grip on my wrists and arms relaxed—reluctantly, I thought, as if it was a pity to lose so excellent an opportunity of paying off old grudges. Very slowly all four drew back, breathing heavily, as men do who struggle to overmaster their breathlessness. So we stood for half a minute, then I moved aside to the upward face of the rock.

"Good!" said I, answering Mademoiselle's bitter mistrust, rather than her broken appeal upon the men's behalf. Against them I had no rancour; the fault was none of theirs, if their zeal lacked information. "Good! He is the Count de Foix! Let Foix and Navarre save him, only let them remember that there is fifty feet of a tumble below that bundle of linen there, and a bed of saw-toothed rocks to fall upon."

It is my belief that for these thirty seconds, and the minute or two of stress which preceded them, Mademoiselle had utterly forgotten the boy's danger. Instantly she turned, and, pointing downward, broke into passionate command. Her speech was that quaint mixture of slurred French, Spanish and Basque which passed for a language in Morsigny, and so was strange to me. But the clamour of the boy's need made her meaning clear, even had she spoken no word. Nudely, ruthlessly clear, and a grim gladness warmed me to see that Hugues and the Spaniard grew cold as she waxed more and more passionate, her brief authority lost at the last in a pleading almost choked by tears.

A word or two of the slurred French I understood, such as peace, Navarre, their duty, then Navarre again, and yet again Navarre. But to more than fifty feet of a fall left them cold. Peace? The peace of a loosened grip was too profound a peace for their taste! Duty? Surely the soul's first duty is to its own body! Navarre? They looked at one another; Navarre would have battles to fight, and dead men, even dead in duty, make no war. So they argued, speaking no word; and so, with my back against the cliff, I read their reasoning and laughed aloud.

But the laughter died in my mouth.

If it failed to shame them, being coarse-grained peasants, it moved Mademoiselle to an unendurable despair. With a last indignant word, some acid, biting phrase of scorn, she knelt to renew her folly of descent. But to do Hugues and the other justice, if they were careful of themselves they were careful also of her, for even before I could reach her they held her back.

"Leave me go, you cowards, leave me go!" she cried, struggling, her face wet with unconscious tears of rage and shame. "My God! is there not one man amongst you!"

"It is for Navarre," said I, giving my bitter mood rein, now she was safe. "It is for Foix and Navarre; let me beg you both to fall down fifty feet for the glory of Foix and Navarre. The thought will comfort you—till you hit the stones at the bottom."

It was not a very manly gibe, but in the best of us, and I do not claim to be that, there is a beast who only needs rousing, and at that moment the man in me was not uppermost. From the hilltop I had sunk to the valley. My new found and newer trampled love was too raw in its wounds to be just. Had not Mademoiselle, in her very last words, called me a coward with the rest? And yet it was she whose scorn and contumely forbade me to climb.

"Oh, that I were a man!" she said, swallowing her sobs till they choked her; "then would I sooner lie dead with the child."

While she was speaking, Brother Paulus had risen and stripped himself of his clinging frock. Now, flinging it aside, he turned to me.

"So would I; she is right, Monsieur Hellewyl; the shame of it is not to be borne."

"A man," said I, answering Mademoiselle, but laying the flat of my hand on the priest's breast, that he might do nothing useless. The spirit within him was strong to dare, but the flesh was weak. Had there been ten Father Pauls, they must have followed one another to the bottom of the cliff. "A man—that is, a true man—one trusts. Do you trust me, Mademoiselle?"

"Oh, you are cruel!" she cried, but the sobs were softer. "Would you let the child die because of a girl's——?" she paused, searching for an adjective, but finding none that fitted her thought went on—"Must I ask your pardon, Monsieur? Must I humble myself to you? I'll do it, I'll do it gladly."

"I would have you say: I trust you. Come what may, I trust you, now and always."

As a child repeats its lesson she answered me, her face all drawn by pain, the tears still shining in her eyes. "I trust you, Monsieur, now and always, come what may."

Of what f............