legitimate, means which had revealed the presence of many other coins in the receptacle. There might be as much as a guinea there by this time. Anne-Hilarion could not get at this wealth, but if he went to interview M. le Soucy he could take the box with him, and perhaps M. le Chevalier would open it.

The preliminary step would certainly be to consult M. de Soucy. But how to do that alone? How to get to Golden Square without the escort of Elspeth or of Baptiste? Elspeth in particular had a wary eye and a watchful disposition. There seemed no way to evade her but to call in miraculous intervention, and this Anne-Hilarion resolved to do.

Little, however, did Elspeth Saunders, that staunch Calvinist, imagine, as she impatiently surveyed the bairn at his "Popish exercises" that evening, what it was that caused their undue prolongation, nor what forces were being invoked against her. Little did she realize to what heavenly interposition was due, at least in Anne-Hilarion's mind, the fact that the next afternoon, at half past one precisely, she slipped on the stairs and twisted her ankle rather badly, so that she had to be conveyed to her room, and Baptiste went to fetch the doctor. M. le Comte had not in his orisons specitied the hour of the miracle (nor, of course, its form), but he was on the alert. Mr. Elphinstone was nowhere about, so he slipped into the library and penned, not without labor, the following note:

Dear Grandpapa,-I think to go to France with M. le Cher de Soussy, if God permits and there is mony suffisant in it, to find my papa. It must have been my ange gardien that pushed Elspeth; she must not mind; perhaps even it was St. Michel luimême. I will not be gone for long, dear Grandpapa. I love you always.

He stood upon a chair and put this

communication on the library mantelpiece; then, clutching his money-box, he struggled successfully to the front door, and set out towards the hackney coaches standing for hire on the other side of the square.

III.

Anne-Hilarion met no dragons on his adventurous way. The hackneycoachman was most agreeable, and willingly agreed to wait, on arrival at Golden Square, in case he might be wanted again.

progress was

The only obstacle to

the purely physical barrier of a stout and slatternly woman who, at that unusual hour, was washing down the dingy staircase, and whom he was obliged to ask to let him pass.

"Bless my soul!" ejaculated the woman, turing in clumsy surprise. "And what are you doing here by yourself, my little gentleman?"

"I have come to see M. le Chevalier de Soucy," answered Anne-Hilarion. "He is above, is he not?"

"The French gentleman? Yes, he is. I'll go first, dearie; mind the pail. To come alone I never did! And who shall I say?"

"The Comte de Flavigny," responded the little boy with due gravity.

Strange to say, M. de Soucy, in his attic room, did not hear the announcement, nor even the shutting of the door. He was sitting at a table, with his back to the visitor, his head propped between his hands, a letter open before him. There was that in his attitude which gave Anne-Hilarion pause; but he finally advanced, and said in his little clear voice,

"M. le Chevalier."

The émigré started, removed his hands, and turned round-"Grand Dieu! toi, Anne!"

His thin, haggard face looked, thought Anne-Hilarion, as if he had been crying-if grown-up people ever

did cry, about which he sometimes speculated. But he was too well-bred to remark on this, and he merely said, in his native tongue, "I have come to ask you, M. le Chevalier, to take me to France, to find my papa."

M. de Soucy, putting his hand to his throat, stared at him a moment. Then he seemed to swallow something, and said, "I am afraid I cannot do that, my child."

Anne-Hilarion knew that grown-up people do not always fall in at once with your ideas, and he was prepared for a little opposition. "Your health is perhaps not re-established?" he suggested politely (for he was master of longer words in French than in English). But M. de Soucy made a gesture signifying that his health was of no account, so Anne-Hilarion proceeded.

"I have brought my money-box," he said with a very ingratiating smile, and, giving his treasury a shake, he laid it on the table at the Chevalier's elbow. "I do not know how much is in it. Will you open it for me?"

M. de Soucy snatched up the letter, jumped from his chair, and went to the window. He stood as if looking out on the leads and the chimney-pots, but as he had put his hand over his eyes, he could not, thought Anne-Hilarion, have seen very much. And gradually it began to dawn upon the little boy that the Chevalier must be offended. He remembered having heard grandpapa say how impossible it was to assist him with money, and he felt very hot all over. Had he done something dreadful?

But M. le Chevalier suddenly swung round from the window. His face was as white as paper.

"Anne," he said in a queer voice, "money won't find your father for us. He... my God, I can't tell him. Come here, child. Bring your moneybox."

M. le Comte obeyed.

"First we must see whether there is enough in it, must we not? It costs a great deal of money to go to France, and, as you know, I am poor."

"I think there is a great deal, but a great deal," said Anne-Hilarion reassuringly, shaking his bank. "Will you not open it and see, M. le Chevalier?"

"Yes, I will open it," answered M. de Soucy. "And . . . if there is enough, we will go to France. But if there is not enough, Anne and I fear there may not be we cannot go. by my decision?"

Will you abide

"Foi de Flavigny," said the child gravely, giving him his hand.

How wonderful are grown-up people! M. le Chevalier had the strong box open in no time. Together they counted its contents.

"Seventeen shillings and four pence -no, five pence," announced M. de Soucy. "I am afraid, Anne . . ."

M. le Comte drew a long breath. The muscles pulled at the corners of his mouth.

"It is not enough?" he asked rather quaveringly.

"Not nearly. Anne, you are a soldier's son, and you must learn to bear disappointment-worse things perhaps. We cannot help your father in that way." Again M. de Soucy struggled with something in his speech. "I do not know, Anne, how we can help him."

Fortunately it was not given to the Comte de Flavigny to read his friend's mind, but he perceived sufficiently from his manner that something was not right. He reflected a moment, and then, remembering the celestial intervention of the afternoon, said,

"Perhaps I had better ask la TresSainte Vierge to take care of him. I do ask her every day, but I mean especially."

"You could ask her," answered de Soucy, bitter pain in his eyes.

"You have no picture of Our Lady, no statue?"

"Not one."

"It does not matter," said the little boy. "Elspeth has taken away my picture of her. They do not know her over here, but that," he added with his courteous desire to excuse, "is of course because she is French. . M. le Chevalier, I think after all I had better ask St. Michel, because he is a soldier. It would be more appropriate for him, do you not think? I will pray St. Michel to take great care of my papa, and then I shall not mind about the money not being enough."

So, standing where he was, his eyes tight shut, he besought the leader of the heavenly cohorts to that end, concluding politely, if mysteriously, "Perhaps I ought to thank you about Elspeth."

it on the mantelpiece, behind the little heathen god. I did not run away, foi de gentilhomme!"

"Send him out of the room," signalled the émigré. But Anne-Hilarion, having perceived Mr. Elphinstone's occupation, was now in great spirits. "Let me look at the livre des Indes, grandpapa! I so much love the pictures. Faites-moi voir les éléphants!" And he jumped up and down, holding on to the arm of his grandfather's chair.

But the old man had followed M. de Soucy to the window.

"What is it, monsieur?" he asked in a whisper. "Bad news from France?" "Read this," said the Chevalier, thrusting the letter into his hands. "It could hardly be worse. D'Hervilly attacked the Republican position at Ste. Barbe five days ago, and was

M. de Soucy nodded. "I will come with you," he said.

IV.

Anne-Hilarion had not been missed, for the domestics were still occupied about Elspeth's accident, and Mr. Elphinstone, though he had returned to the library, had not found his farewell letter. The only surprise which the old gentleman showed was that his grandson should be accompanied by M. de Soucy. He got up from a drawing of one of the gates of Delhi that he was making for insertion in the great MS. volumes of his memoirs, at which he had now been working for some years, and welcomed the intruders.

"Anne has been paying me a visit," said the Frenchman. "He wanted to go to France, but I have persuaded him to put it off for a little.-Can I have a word alone with you, Sir?"

"Did you not get my letter, grandpapa?" broke in Anne-Hilarion, clinging to Mr. Elphinstone's hand. "I left

knows what has happened by nowwhat has happened to René-the worst, I have small doubt-”

Mr. Elphinstone unfolded the letter with shaking hands, but ere he had got to the bottom of the first page Anne-Hilarion's voice, oddly changed, broke in upon them.

"I can see my papa! I can see my papa! He is lying on a great white beach by the sea. There are many people-many ships, soldiers. Papa is ill or asleep; he has a cloak over him—”

Both men turned hastily to see the child kneeling on his grandfather's chair, his elbows on the table, staring down intently at something directly under his eyes. It was the saucer of Indian ink with which Mr. Elphinstone had been drawing. The old man caught the younger by the arm, for he at least, after years in the Orient, knew what was happening. M. de Soucy, making a long disused gesture, crossed himself

"Now he's waking up. He has a

pistol in his hand. I do not know what-Papa! Papa! ne faites pas cela! Papa" Anne-Hilarion's voice rose to a scream; he flung out his arms and fell forward on the table, his curls in the stream of ink from the broken saucer.

V.

And at that hour the rain was falling steadily on the white sand of Quiberon Bay, on the long low dunes, on Hoche's triumphant grenadiers, on the tiny crumbling fort which had seen Sombreuil's tragic surrender, on the useless English ships, on the lines of Royalist prisoners, and on the upturned face of René-Constant, Marquis de Flavigny, who lay, shot through the thigh, a short stone's-cast from the rising tide. All about him were the evidences of the great disaster, but for long he had not heeded them, lying where he had been left, by a little spur of rock that had its extremity in the sea. He had been unconscious when two men of his regiment-Loyal-Emigrant-had carried him there, hoping to get him on board one of the boats of the English squadron. But the rescuing boats were already overladen; the getting off to them was very difficult, and there was no chance for a fainting man when even good swimmers perished. So they had laid him down by the rock; he was no worse off than hundreds of others, and neither the cries of the drowning nor the boom of the English cannon wakened him.

But now he had drifted back to pain and the thirst of the stricken and the numbing remembrance of catastrophe. He knew not at first why he lay there, for he had got his hurt up on the sandhills. He had tried to raise his head, but desisted from the pain of the effort, and the fingers of his left hand ploughed idly into the sand. As it dribbled through them, white as lime, he remembered everything . . .

The Marquis's eyes, so like AnneHilarion's, darkened. Since there was no one to make an end of him, he would do it himself, not so much to end the pain and to hasten a lingering death as because everything was lost. And he would go to Jeannette.

But his senses were playing him tricks again. One moment he was here, a piece of driftwood in the great wreck; the next, he was in Mr. Elphinstone's library, going again through that dreadful parting with Anne-Hilarion, promising him that he would soon return, and the boy was clinging to him, swallowing his sobs. He could hear them now, blent with the plunge of the tide. Better end it, and go to Jeannette.

He thrust down a hand, tugged a pistol out of his belt, cocked it and put it to his head.

But ere the cold rim touched his temple sky and sea had gone black. Flashes of radiance shot through the humming darkness, steadying to a wide sunflower of light, and then . . . he saw distinctly Anne-Hilarion's terrified face, his little outstretched hands. His own sank powerless to the sand, and he was swept out again on the flood of unconsciousness.

VI.

"Not a single blessed patrol, by gad!" thought Mr. Francis Tollemache to himself. "That means they have got at the port wine and beer we landed at Fort Penthièvre; trust the sansculottes for scenting it out. But, O gemini, what luck for us!"

For Mr. Tollemache, the youngest lieutenant of the Pomone, the English flagship, was at that moment, midnight, steering a small boat along the shore of Quiberon. On his one hand were the lights of the English squadron, yet in the bay; on the other, the Republican camp-fires among the sandhills. The files of

Royalist prisoners had started hours ago up the peninsula on their march to death, but Sir John Warren was still hoping to pick up a fugitive or two under cover of darkness, and Mr. Tollemache's was not the only boat occupied on this furtive errand. But it was emphatically the most daring; nor had Sir John the faintest idea that Mr. Tollemache was hazarding his own, a midshipman's, and half a dozen other lives in the search for one particular Royalist. Mr. Tollemache, indeed, never intended that he should.

A rescued Frenchman sat already in the stern-sheets-one of the soldiers, picked up earlier in the day, who had carried M. de Flavigny down the beach. Truth to tell, Mr. Tollemache had smuggled him into the boat as a guide, for the task of finding the wounded man in the dark would otherwise have been hopeless. But the Frenchman could direct them to the little rock by which his leader had been laid, and, rocks being uncommon on the long handy shore, he did so direct them. Unfortunately, as Mr. Tollemache, no expert in tongues, could not always follow his meaning, they had not yet found it. Already, indeed, they had made hopefully for some dark object at the water's edge only to ascertain that it was a dead horse, and Mr. Tollemache's flowers of speech at the discovery had not withered till the body of a drowned Royalist slid and bumped along the boat's side. But meanwhile, even though the shore was unguarded, it was getting momentarily more difficult to see; the tide was rising once more, the men were getting impatient. After all, it was rather a wildgoose chase.

The French soldier tugged suddenly at his arm. "V'là, m'sieur!" he whispered hoarsely. "There is the place that is the rock!"

The young lieutenant peered through the gloom, gave a curt order or two,

and, lifted on the swell the Pomone's boat greeted the sand of Quiberon Bay. Another moment, and Englishman and Frenchman had found what they sought. But only Mr. Dibdin's special maritime cherub averted the discharge of the cocked pistol which the Marquis de Flavigny still grasped, and which Mr. Tollemache had some difficulty in disengaging before they got him into the boat.

The middy, now in charge of the tiller, desired as they pulled away to be informed why his superior officer had been so set on saving this one poor devil.

"Oh, I met him once in England," replied Mr. Tollemache carelessly and quite untruthfully. "(Here, give me the tiller now.) It makes a difference when you have known a man, you see."

For he was ashamed to avow the real motive power-his chance acquaintance that afternoon at Richmond with a younger member of the family. At any rate, it was not a safe thing to let a midshipman know.

They were nearing the Pomone when the Marquis de Flavigny, at their feet, his head on his compatriot's knee, began to mutter something. The middy bent down.

"The poor beggar thinks he's talking to his wife or his sweetheart," said he, pleased at being able to recognize a word of French. "Anne, her name seems to be."

Mr. Tollemache, in the darkness and the sea-wind, turned away his head and smiled.

Many weeks later Anne-Hilarion, from the haven of his father's arms, suggested yet another use for the contents of his money-box. He proposed to make over the receptacle in its entirety to Lieutenant Francis Tollemache, of His Brittanic Majesty's Navy, now on leave, the same to be employed in whatever manner that officer deemed best.