I am the Pastor Duchesne. See my little chapel, built as you know from money subscribed by those who had left much behind them for truth's sake. I look around and feel that I have grown almost into a green old age, with many brethren and sisters, many children round me. I am pastor, friend, schoolmaster, and move serenely amidst our band of emigrants, loving and beloved; and yet and yet times when the king, who is weakly virtuous, | try! asylum for freedom of religion! and again can undo the deeds of the strongly vicious, I will give the lad your message and show them to him, if he still craves for the old château of Le Platane, and thinks to found the seigneury afresh. I tell you plainly, though, that I believe all seigneury is at an end-that you and I, and those who have hoped to find work to do for the good cause, will see France nearly perish, and ruin come upon the men who, in casting us and ours out from the land, flung away those whose influence might have saved them from the swift destruction that they merit." "You say you have been to Gard, and actually seen my old house of Le Platane? Who is the usurper-who the robber that now despoils my garden and eats the ripe fruit from the orchard?" asked the old man gloomily. "No usurper is there yet, my friend," said the pastor gently. "The faithful Corneille, the son of your old steward, and the playmate of Louis, holds house and land yet. The apples hung ripe upon the trees, the grapes upon the vines; and still, like many of us, the faithful fellow hopes to see the day when the refugees may return. He has done some slight service to his department, I hear, but he is still hesitating. I gathered from what he said that he thinks the title deeds were stolen, perhaps burned. I could have undeceived him, but wanted your permission; so he and his son and daughter live there yet, as it were, on sufferance. Lucky for him, perhaps, that he had influence with the other party, who left him there in charge. As it is, you remember Pithon?" "Yes, I know," said old Du Boisson, with a kind of spasm, wringing his friend's hand. "I don't often confess-it is not a Protestant ordinance," said the pastor, growing pale and calm again; "but friend, let us pray to be delivered from faithlessness, from the awful delusion that anything other than His strength will be sufficient for us. Let us pray, too, that it may be made perfect in weakness." So saying Pastor Duchesne rose, carefully buttoned the packet of papers and parchments into his capacious pocket, and the two men walked towards the house. PART II. Now, my dear, figure to yourself also this:A low, flat country, straggling out into a kind of broken waste, intersected here and there with factories, tan-pits, and clumps of wood. Still further in the distance, fields and country roads, the latter leading occasionally over bridges spanning a stream. Further again, a long house of white stone, with a queer gabled roof, and a courtyard in front, reached by clang "What, the drunken foreman of the tan- ing iron gates; and behind, level with offices, pits?" "Yes. He is a second cousin of Corneille, and has an evil eye. He too has a son-a worthy pair. Corneille suspects that the elder Pithon conducted the dragoons to your house that fatal night. He is dead. The son takes up his hatred with the malignity of a Vendetta. Already he accuses Corneille of being a Protes tant in disguise, and swears to denounce him.", "You can come and go, Duchesne, and yet are unhurt." "Yes, but I know where my friends are, and pass quickly, and not without danger. I must go, old friend; a fire consumes me sometimes, calm and impassive as I may seem. I left France before you, and as a young man, the chosen pastor of a people who loved and trusted me. Wolves ravened amidst my flock, and I was spattered with the blood of those who stood around me, sword in hand, to fight for life and liberty. I came here-blessed coun kitchens, and out-houses, a broad terrace with a stone balcony, overlooking a flower-garden, which leads by various paths to orchards, meadows, and farm-buildings. The house has been known as, and is still called by the name of Le Platane, a title taken from a great plane-tree which still rears its dusty and somewhat drooping head in front of the entrance-gate. One limb of the tree is bare, and seems to have been blasted with fire. 1 For ten years in the history of the house a fragment of tarred rope hung to this fork of the plane-tree. A Protestant had been hung there, covered with pitch, and lighted. The hand that set the flame to the pitch was that of Jules Pithon, foreman of one of the tanneries; the hand that cut down the body was that of Jean Corneille, who, from being steward at Le Platane, had kept about the place after its master had fled to England, and the furniture and effects had been stolen or destroyed by a mob set on by bishops and royalist rob- | bers. Then, finding that nobody returned to the bare walls and the gardens, he moved a few effects into the building; and having certain letters from the suffragan which might be his authority in case of inquiries, settled down in the mansion, not its master, but its tenant, paying only tithe and tax, and living less in fear of church questions than of Pithon. Pithon had vainly wooed a young girl who was the personal attendant of Madame Du Boisson, but she chose to marry the steward, who was then no more than assistant at the silk factory at Ambroix. What the jealous rage of Pithon, who was a drunkard, with the voice of a boar and the face of a satyr, might have had to do with the misfortune that had overtaken Le Platane cannot now be told, but it is certain that he continued his enmity after Corneille and the wife, who had borne him two children, were dead. That enmity was handed down to Pithon's son; so that though the younger Corneille, himself now a widower with one little girl, kept house in a sad, lonely way, with his sister to supply the place of a mother to his child, the present foreman of the tanneries, who was by far below him in social position, spoke always of Le Platane with a sneer, and of its tenant with a bitter hatred, which was the more remarkable as he had sworn to his intimates that for the sister, Sara Corneille, he, Pithon, would have his skin converted into shoe-leather at any moment. Not that she had ever spoken to the man. She, a modest, shy, rather melancholy, pretty woman, had seen his shock-head sometimes as she passed the Golden Bear not far from the suburb at St. Ambroix; had noted an alarming expression in his eyes as he turned on the bench in front of the door, and took his pipe out of his mouth to stare after her; but even her brother Jean knew little or nothing of the younger Pithon. His father's enemy being dead, and times having altered a little, there was so much less to fear, that he was now only disturbed by wondering whether any of the old master's family would venture to return. It is three years since the Pastor Duchesne, appearing suddenly at Le Platane, brought Corneille intelligence of the death of the elder Du Boisson, his father's old master. The younger was still alive he heard-alive and happywith a charming lady, and a son the very image of the old race, and now not far from twenty years old. Three years had passed since then, and yet he was only tenant of Le Platane, to the mas ters of which he had been faithful-to them, and the promise made to his father on his death-bed. Now, however, something should be done. The title-deeds had never been found. Closet and panel, garret and cellar, had been searched and sounded in vain. They were doubtless either burned, as many others had been, or had been taken away with some old piece of furniture and lost to that day. At any rate, now was the time to seek some better title to the house that he had held so long; if not for himself, might he not obtain some kind of warrant for the family. That merciful prince, Louis XVI., would have no dragonnading under his royal sanction. He had already given his Protestants the right to registration of marriage and certificate of death, and since that time men had believed that the persecutions were at an end. Corneille had some friends about the court, and after long deliberation and many provisions for the safety of his sister and his child, he drew up a document setting forth his wishes, to be framed into a petition to royalty or an appeal to some person in power, and started for Paris. PART III. Hugo Du Boisson had grown into a man, and the sword that his grandfather had hung to his shoulder on his fourteenth birth-day was still on its hook at the head of his bed in the old house, but it was now a souvenir of the dead. The Pastor Duchesne was in France on one of those excursions which he continued to take thither, though he was now more than seventy years old. A wonderful man that good pastor. I remember him so well-tall, slim, and upright as a youth, with a bright eye and an unblemished skin, his long hair, black streaked with silver, hanging down upon his smooth cheeka man of whom one longed to learn the secret of health, the rule of diet. I have heard him tell it. "Eat what you can get, but eat little. Drink what you need, which is not much." He made tisane of herbs according to the old French way-beverages and medicines in one. His friend, Louis Du Boisson, would have none of them, but took French wine or English beer, and watered both. He is taking wine on the day I speak ofwine that he has fetched from a little cellar under the house, and has opened with his own hand. Madame is still sitting opposite to him. Hugo-slender, handsome, and, from his pale complexion and straight features, a contrast to | sent, and you still desire to see the inheritance his father's apple cheek and jolly figure-waits for the toast. Their glasses are filled, and as they clink them together the mother looks lovingly on her handsome boy. "Tis your birth-day, dear son," she says, "long life and happiness to you?" The father clasps the son's hand. "What a joy to be together still when so many of our poor French people are even yet parting from home and all that they love," he says. "Hugo, do you still dream of seeking our old house, and of claiming the barren right to call its rotting timbers yours?" "Forgive me if I say yes," says the young man, "though all I hold dear are under this roof. I feel as though I should not fulfil a trust till I had tried to do what you could not do, father-to restore Le Platane to our family. Grandfather expected it of me, though he said no word. I saw it often in his face. I knew it six years ago when he gave me that old sword. I guess that he has left some message for me with the pastor, for I saw him hand, him a packet in the garden on that very day, and There was much questioning, for he had but just returned from France, "where things look promising," he said, "if the king do but hold. At any rate, now is the time for my! pupil here to decide whether or not he will look at his inheritance and try to win it back; though, mind, I do not counsel it. You have converted me, Louis," he added. "Those who hold it have the better claim after all these years-Corneille's sister and his motherless child." Hugo was silent for a minute. "By making it ours we could better make it theirs," he said presently. "Will you give me my grandfather's message, pastor?" "The message is here," said Duchesne, as he handed him a sheet of paper containing six lines. It said:"If your father and mother con On the morning of the third day after Jean Corneille left St. Ambroix for Paris, it was observed that Pithon was not at work. For some days past there had been one or other of the men absent from the tanneries, and the nailers had struck their labour, letting the forges go out, and standing about in groups or drinking at the wretched little wine shops in the suburbs. A band of stunted, miserable-looking fellows with wild looks, people who lived in stone huts and fed on chestnuts, had come down from the mountains towards Lozere. Evidently there was something strange going forward. One evening little Elizabeth Corneille, who had been out to the fowl-house to see if her speckled hen was sitting, came running in to Mademoiselle Corneille with a scared face. 'Oh, my aunt!" she cried, as she hid her head in her apron, there are men in the wood with faces like toads, and with red caps on their heads. They laugh and gnash their teeth, and they come this way;" and the frightened child crept to her aunt's side and cowered there, trembling. At the same time there was a knocking at the back-door leading to the terrace, and presently angry voices were heard in altercation. Mademoiselle Corneille was one of those fair, plaintive-looking women who know little of fear all the time that they appear so much afraid. She would probably be in some terror if a wasp buzzed about her face, but she was always ready for a great emergency. That was so much the better now that she opened the window leading on to the balcony, and was confronted by Pithon, who had forced his way past the cow-boy and the two kitchen servants. Elizabeth still clung to her aunt's apron. Pithon looked down at her with an ugly scowl. "Send in the brat," he said; "I want to speak to you." He was, for him, quite fashionably dressed, in a broad-skirted blue-coat, and pantaloons of ❘ dirty white nankeen. His neck was enveloped in a huge neckcloth, on his head was a cocked hat adorned with an enormous tricolour rosette, and a huge sabre clanked at his heel. "What is your pleasure here?" asked mademoiselle, "and who are you?" Pithon frowned. 'You ask who am I," he said, between his teeth, "I who have followed you with my eyes as a wolf-nay, I won't call myself a wolf either-I can be a lamb, as you will find. Your hand could tame me at any minute, and it is your hand that I want. I, Pithon, chief of my circle in the coming rights of men, I who love you, come to-day a lamb, beware how you turn me into a wolf." on to the balcony, a crashing blow from a heavy cane struck Pithon senseless over the balustrade; and mademoiselle, looking down, saw the Pastor Duchesne standing there, and by his side a younger man, who held the child in his arms. This young man was Hugo Du Boisson. He had come at a strange time to claim his inheritance. In the courtyard in front a score or so of honest men, Protestants of the district, had come with their pastor to witness, if need were, the acceptance of the rightful owner of Le Platane by Corneille. As the bell rung its noisy summons, they came running round by the stables. Before they had reached the balcony the pastor checked them by a warning gesture, and went down into the garden. In a minute "Pithon!" she exclaimed in a tone of hor- or so, Pithon, who showed some signs of reror. The name had been to her all that was viving, was gagged, and securely bound with vile; and now the son of the man who was her leathern thongs from the old coach-house, father's enemy stood before her, and in tones wherein he was locked till he might recover. of half drunken frenzy demanded that she The men in red caps had heard the summons should leave the house and go with him to of the bell, and so had some of the people far Paris. There was something so monstrous in away in the village. There were old folks there the proposition, that she would have laughed yet who remembered that clang when it was but for the danger in which she stood. Still the tocsin summoning Protestant gentlemen to among the trees on the left she could see a buckle on their swords. A crowd of men and number of men wearing red caps, and armed women were coming towards the house in front. with axes, pikes, and muskets. What did it The knot of insurgents who were waiting for all mean? Pithon came running to the garden-wall, over which they climbed, one or two muskets being discharged as those who held them scrambled through the thicket. "Do you not know that even if you were to compel me, the law would punish you; that once in Paris, where my brother has friends, you would be held accountable, as you will be here, if you do not leave this house; that I have but to summon aid even now and denounce you?" "Bah!" grinned Pithon, "that's all over. There is no law but that of the people, no prisons for the patriots who hold Paris and have cracked the Bastille itself like a nut. As to your brother, he was alive when I last saw him; whether he lives to-morrow depends upon yourself." "So you think to frighten a woman, do you, brave man?" retorted mademoiselle, indignantly. In another moment she had sprung to a wooden stair leading to a small round tower whence hung a rope. With a vigorous pull she set the bell in the tower ringing, and its loud clang resounded in the sultry air. "Bah! who dare aid you?" shouted Pithon hoarsely. "Come down or I will dash out the brains of this young rook!" and he seized the little Elizabeth, holding her up in his arms. "Shall we arm and defend the house, pastor?" asked one of Duchesne's body-guard. 'There are but a score of these fellows, and the reformation has not yet reached St. Ambroix. These are not patriots, they are robbers." "Keep them parleying for one minute," he said hastily. "There is no safety for the woman and the child here. The cup of the iniquity of kings is full, and France has begun to wade in blood which will be soon knee-deep." In a moment he had taken the child from Hugo, and, followed by mademoiselle, entered the house. "There is no safety for you here," he said quickly, "for more of these ruffians may be upon us before night. Let me know what can be saved in a few words, and then put some bread and wine in a basket and follow me, just as you are or stay-put on a servant's white cap and coarse shawl, and bring the child with you as she is." There was no time to question. In less than ten minutes she was by his side, he going down into the cellars, and the child following in Only for a moment though. A swift, light step sounded in the garden, a tall figure darted | wonder. "Are we to hide here in the cellars?" she said. "No," replied the pastor, as he came to a great baulk of timber, or what had once been the wine-cellar, "follow me." He knew that house better than she or her brother. With a vigorous push the timber yielded a little, and a bolt was shot. It was a heavy door, and led to a passage under ground. Stooping and groping his way, the pastor led them on for a hundred yards or so, till they saw light glimmering between the crevices of rock just before them. "This should turn," said Duchesne, putting his shoulder to a large mass of stone. It yielded a foot or so, but the pivot had rusted, and a pile of loose shale lay in the way. Now, in six words," said the old man, as he kissed the child and took mademoiselle's hands, "squeeze through here and you will find yourselves in the little clump of wood beyond the old cherry-orchard. Then strike to the right and go on till you come to the river bank; you have then but two miles to walk to old Gregoire's house—you know him, he is the ferryman, and true as steel. There I will join you after dark, if I am alive; if not, a messenger will bring you this token that he comes from me, and tell you what to do." As he spoke he held up his watch, pushed them through the opening, and turned again towards the passage. The insurgents had drawn up in front of the balcony, the Protestants were on the balcony itself, both sides looking with hostile intentions, when a strange sound was heard coming along the open road-a sound of the marching of many men, the tatoo of a dozen drums, and the crunching of wheels, mingled with wild cries. Pastor Duchesne heard it as he emerged from the house again, after having stumbled along the subterranean passage. "Listen! it is a regiment of soldiers," said Hugo, seizing his hand. "I shall take care of mine and of this boy's better than if I had you. Adieu!" and he bent his head in prayer. Every head was bent also, and the men went slowly out, scattering over the fields by the backway. Then the roar grew louder, a wild mob of men, among whom, I shame to say, were some women, tramped along the road with cries and curses, half naked, smeared with dirt, and armed with all kinds of weapons, but almost all of them wearing red caps; they howled the burden of a terrible song. There were no horses among them, but two men carried something on a kind of hand-bier. In front of the house they stopped, and two or three, who seemed to be leaders, called for silence. When the clamour ceased, the stillness seemed intense. A dead calm was in the sultry air; a great heavy cloud tipped with lurid light hung in the heavens. "Is this the house?" asked one of the leaders. "This is the house," replied a fellow who seemed to be lieutenant of Pithon's band. "This is the crow's-nest citizen." "Then let us put up the sign," shouted a hideous wretch in a leather apron, girded with a long rope, and carrying a sledge-hammer over his shoulder. "There have been plenty of such these last three days, and they are effective." There was some commotion round the bearers of the hand-bier. The man in the leathern apron unwound the rope from his waist and flung an end of it over the blasted limb of the great plane-tree. A shout, a sharp jerk, a scream of laughter, and curses, and a man's dead body swung there-the body of Jean Corneille. "We couldn't save him even if we'd been so minded," shouted the leader. "He went where the intendant Foulon and Berthier, his son-in-law, grinned their last, as pike-heads. All's one!" "Pithon! Pithon! where's Pithon? Come, comrade, let us have no private affairs to interfere with business. Come!" The Pastor Duchesne and Hugo had seen the horrid spectacle and heard the words that accompanied it. The insurgents were preparing to fire and sack the house. The old man drew his companion away, and both descended to the cellar. When they emerged into the open air and looked back, a terrible storm had broken; a peal of thunder shook Le |