A THREATENED HORROR.

When Gros Guillem returned to the Castle of Domme, his feet were so swollen that the boots had to be cut off, and his feet swathed in linen.

By his orders, Ogier del' Peyra was thrown into a dungeon for the night. The old Seigneur had been surrounded, disarmed, and captured by some of the routiers while recovering their horses, which Ogier was endeavouring to prevent by cutting their reins.

As soon as he was taken he knew that his doom was sealed, and he bore the knowledge with his usual stolidity, amounting to indifference. A quiet, plodding, heavy man he had ever been, only notable for his rectitude in the midst of a tortuous generation; he had been roused to energy and almost savagery by circumstances, and, thus roused, had manifested a power and prevision which no one had expected to find in him. Now that all was done that he could do, he slid back into his ordinary quietude. He slept soundly in his prison, for he had greatly excited and tired himself during the day.

"Man can die but once," he said; and the saying was characteristic of the man—it was commonplace. This was, perhaps, less the case when he added, "An honest conscience can look Death in the face without blushing."

Consequently, when thrust into his dungeon, he took the blanket ungraciously afforded him, and wrapped it round him, ate his portion of bread, drank a draught of water, signed himself—said the peasant's prayer, common in Quercy and PÉrigord as in England—

Then he threw up his feet on the board that was given him for bed, and in five minutes slept and snored.

It was otherwise with Le Gros Guillem. He would tolerate no one near him but his wife and daughter, and they came in for explosions of wrath. The fever caused by pain had inflamed his head: he talked, swore, raged against everyone and all things, and boasted of the example he would make on the morrow of the man who was in his power. NoÉmi knew that some expedition had been undertaken, and that it had failed, but she knew no particulars, certainly had no idea that it had resulted in the capture of Jean del' Peyra's father.

She bathed and bound up her father's feet, and applied cold water as often as they began to burn. This gradually eased him, especially as he lay with his feet raised. The wounds he had received were of no great depth, but they were painful, because the soles of the feet are especially sensitive; and as all the grit and thorns had been removed by the surgeon before he left Domme, there was no fear but that with rest he would be well again in a week or ten days; well enough at least to walk a little.

The wife of Gros Guillem was a dreamy, desponding woman, who paid no attention to what he said, interested herself in no way in his affairs; neither stirring him to deeds of violence nor interfering to mitigate the miseries wrought by him. She accepted her position placidly. She was fond of Guillem in her fashion without being demonstrative, and it was a marvel to everyone how it was that he was so attached to her, and that she had maintained her hold on him through so many years.

It was reported, and the report was true, that the lady had been carried off by Guillem from the Castle of FÉnelon. Guillem had retained her, in defiance of the excommunication launched at him by the Bishop of Cahors, and in defiance of the more trenchant and material weapons wielded against him by the FÉnelon family, which was powerful in Quercy, and had a fortress on the Dordogne above Domme, and a house and rock castle above La Roque Gageac, side by side with that belonging to the Bishop of Sarlat. In an affray with Guillem's company the husband had been killed; the widow accepted this fact as she had accepted the fact that she had been carried off by violence. She sighed, lamented, pitied herself as a veritable martyr, and acquiesced in being the wife of the man who, though he had not killed her husband with his own hand, had caused his death.

With morning Guillem was easier and his head cooler, but there was no alteration in his resolve with regard to Del' Peyra. He would deal with him in such a signal manner as would from henceforth deter any man from lifting a finger against himself.

In his fever he had racked his brain to consider in what manner he would treat him.

He sent for his lieutenant and ordered that he should himself be carried into the keep.

"And," said he, "bring up the prisoner—and call up the men, into the lower dungeon."

NoÉmi was walking on the terrace of the castle that same morning; she had been up late, had attended to the fevered man, her father, and now was sauntering in the cool under the shade of the lime-trees, clipped en berceau, that occupied the walk on the walls—a walk that commanded the glorious valley of the Dordogne, that wondrous river which flows through some of the most beautiful and wild scenery in Europe, and is also the most neglected by the traveller in quest of beauty and novelty.

At this time she knew something of the events of the previous day. She knew also of the taking and the destruction of l'Eglise Guillem. Twice had the Del' Peyras measured their strength against the redoubted Captain, and twice had they forced him to fly. At the head of raw peasants without rudimentary discipline they had defied and beaten the troopers of a hundred skirmishes. She was not surprised. She had seen Rossignol. Great wrongs wake corresponding forces that must expend themselves on the wrong-doers. It is but a matter of time before the thunder-cloud bursts. Every crime committed sends up its steam to swell the vaporous masses and carries with it the lightning.

Nursed though NoÉmi had been in an atmosphere of violence, hearing of it as matter for exultation, the ruin of households and homesteads spoken of as a matter of course, she had never been brought face to face with the wreckage till she was shown it at Ste. Soure.

And did she feel anger against the Del' Peyras for having taken up arms to revenge their wrongs? Nothing was more natural: nothing more just where the Crown and law were powerless, than that men should right themselves. She would have despised the Del' Peyras had they sat down under their wrong without any attempt to repay it.

NoÉmi's nature was a good one, but it was undisciplined. Her mother had allowed her to go her own way. Her father treated her with indulgence, and that precisely where she should have been checked.

In a lawless society she had learned to fear neither God nor the king. Both were too far off. The one in Heaven, the other in England; too distant to rule effectively. A certain perfunctory homage was claimed by both, neither was regarded as exercising any control over men. A feudal service was all that a bandit in those days, or indeed any baron or seigneur, thought of rendering to the Almighty. He would fight in a crusade for Him, he would do knightly homage in church, but he would no more obey the laws of the Christian religion than he would those of the realm of France.

NoÉmi had seen but little of Jean del' Peyra, and yet that little had surprised her, and had awoke in her thoughts that were to her strange, and yet, though strange, consonant with her instinctive sense of what was right and wrong.

Jean del' Peyra not only surprised her, but occupied her thoughts: she saw, almost for the first time, in him one of a different order from the men with whom she had been thrown. Even her cousins, the Tardes, were akin in mind and consciencelessness to the routiers.What they did that was right was done rather out of blind obedience to instinct, or allegiance to their feudal lord, the Bishop of Sarlat. They were noble, for they had escutcheons over their doors, but all their nobility was external. They were boastful, empty roysterers.

On the other hand, the Del' Peyras were quiet, made no pretence to being more than they were, and were inspired with a moral sense and a regard for their fellow-men.

She saw how far greater was the influence exerted by the old man and his son than was exercised by that remorseless man of war, Guillem, or the braggart Jacques Tarde. Her father controlled men by fear; Ogier del' Peyra moved men by respect. The Captain was a destructive, and only a destructive element. Solely by means of men like the Del' Peyras could human happiness and well-being be built up.

NoÉmi was a thoughtful girl.

At first, somewhat contemptuously, she had set down Jean del' Peyra as a milksop; from what she had heard, his father was but a country clown. But the country clown and the milksop had revealed in themselves a force, an energy quite unexpected. NoÉmi laughed as her busy mind worked. She laughed to think of the discomfiture of professional fighting men, accustomed to arms from their youth, by a parcel of inexperienced peasants and charcoal-burners.

She was glad that these oppressed beings had risen. It showed that there was in them a nature above that of rabbits. She had seen a thousand times the holes into which they ran at the glint of a spearhead, at the jangle of a spur. But now they had issued from their holes and had hunted like wolves.

But these poor, ignorant timid peasants would never have done this had they not been led. It was the moral character, the true nobility of the Del' Peyras that had rallied the people around them, given them courage, and directed their blind impulse of revenge into proper forms of retaliation.

Was the execution of those ten men of her father's band to be accounted a wanton act of cruelty?

NoÉmi could not admit this. Some such rude administration of justice was rendered necessary by the times. The men who had suffered had merited their death by a hundred deeds of barbarity.

It was as though a spell had fallen on the girl. She was exultant, her heart was bounding with pride, and that because her father and his ruffians had been put to rout by their adversaries.

The girl was unable to explain to herself the reason of this, but, indeed, she did not admit to herself that it was as has been described. Yet she was sensible that some spell was on her. She had proposed to cast one on Jean. That kiss she had given him had been intended to work the charm. But, alack! there are dangerous spells which a witch may weave that affect herself as much as her victim, and of such was even this.

As NoÉmi paced the terrace, her mind in a ferment, she was accosted by Roger, the good-natured, somewhat impudent fellow who had attended her on her expedition to the Devil's Table.

He had torn off his red cross, but he had not left Domme, nor, indeed, the castle. He would no longer share in an expedition against Ste. Soure, but he was not unwilling to do any other service for the Captain.

He could now exult over his comrades who had returned from such an expedition with diminished numbers, defeated.

He approached the girl and accosted her.

NoÉmi answered curtly that she did not desire to speak to him. She disliked the forwardness of the man.

"But," said he, "I would save his life—he saved mine."

"Save whom?"

"The Seigneur del' Peyra."

"What of him?"

"He was taken yesterday."

"The Seigneur—taken!"

"And the Captain is now with him—in the dungeon under the keep."

"Doing what?" asked NoÉmi in breathless alarm.

"There is none in the world can save him but yourself; the Captain would listen to no one else."

"Save him—from what?"

"The oubliette."