d'Étiolles"--the crystal-gazer, and now the charming little _vivandière_--but they were all so many instruments to help him to win the fairest of them all--Denise. It was clear as noonday now. His task was to master the strand of the web in which these women, by design or accident, enwrapped him, and to make them serve his purpose while he seemed to serve theirs. It was an idea which grew in power and fascination every day. Women appealed to him by nature; before the charm of mind and body in women he was defenceless, but it was his love for Denise that had inspired the conception of yoking the pleasure of life to the attainment of a glorious ambition. To-night was a matchless opportunity--and others would follow.But his mind while it revolved was fully alert. He believed in himself and his sword. His faith in his star grew stronger each day. But fate and God helped those who would best help themselves. To-night he must not fail on this difficult task because he neglected anything that caution could suggest.

From time to time he halted. The night was dark, that was good, and a raw mist steamed out of the sodden earth. He had taken the precaution to bind his horse’s hoofs in soft cloth, and she, a powerful English thoroughbred, his favourite mare, knew her master’s will by instinct. The road, too, was easy to find. No one crossed his path. And here at last was the little wood of which he had been told. Half a mile away gleamed dully a fire, probably an English picket. He dismounted and listened intently. Not a sound. And now very warily he plunged forward into the bowels of this grisly little wood, leading his horse, his pistols cocked and sword ready. Presently he stumbled; only a fallen log; he stumbled again; another? No. This time it was a dead man.

André dragged him out and let the rays of his masked lantern fall cautiously on his face. Poor wretch! half-naked too--a common gallows bird of a marauder, stripped by the thieves and with a knife-thrust in his throat, a common enough spectacle to those who had played at war before, mere carrion in the daylight, but causing the flesh to creep in the raw chills of this infernal hiding-place of treachery. Let him lie. And now forward again. Pah! another corpse! A woman, and young, too, that rascal’s companion no doubt, and stripped as he was. He bent over her. Ha! what was that? One hand gone? There had been a quarrel, the robbers had killed her and her mate, and to save time had simply chopped off her fingers to get the booty she had gripped so tightly. Let her lie beside him there and forward again, for such is war.

Halt! Here is the 

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