valiant lesser noblesse who had flocked into the service of the king.     

       They were first cousins, these two, and there was just sufficient resemblance in the clear-cut features to recall the relationship. De Catinat was sprung from a noble Huguenot family, but having lost his parents early he had joined the army, and had worked his way without influence and against all odds to his present position. His father's younger brother, however, finding every path to fortune barred to him through the persecution to which men of his faith were already subjected, had dropped the "de" which implied his noble descent, and he had taken to trade in the city of Paris, with such success that he was now one of the richest and most prominent citizens of the town. It was under his roof that the guardsman now sat, and it was his only daughter whose white hand he held in his own.     

       "Tell me, Adele," said he, "why do you look troubled?"     

       "I am not troubled, Amory,"     

       "Come, there is just one little line between those curving brows. Ah, I can read you, you see, as a shepherd reads the sky."     

       "It is nothing, Amory, but—"     

       "But what?"     

       "You leave me this evening."     

       "But only to return to-morrow."     

       "And must you really, really go to-night?"     

       "It would be as much as my commission is worth to be absent. Why, I am on duty to-morrow morning outside the king's bedroom! After chapel-time Major de Brissac will take my place, and then I am free once more."     

       "Ah, Amory, when you talk of the king and the court and the grand ladies, you fill me with wonder."     

       "And why with wonder?"     

       "To think that you who live amid such splendour should stoop to the humble room of a mercer."     

       

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