to prevent the interval left by the erasure from being easily observed.  If I succeed in this, your door will not be marked, and your names will not be called to-morrow morning when the tumbrils come for the guillotine.  In the present confusion of prisoners pouring in every day for trial, and prisoners pouring out every day for execution, you will have the best possible chance of security against awkward inquiries, if you play your cards properly, for a good fortnight or ten days at least.  In that time—­”

“Well! well!” cried Trudaine, eagerly.

Lomaque looked toward the tribunal door, and lowered his voice to a fainter whisper before he continued, “In that time Robespierre’s own head may fall into the sack!  France is beginning to sicken under the Reign of Terror.  Frenchmen of the Moderate faction, who have lain hidden for months in cellars and lofts, are beginning to steal out and deliberate by twos and threes together, under cover of the night.  Robespierre has not ventured for weeks past to face the Convention Committee.  He only speaks among his own friends at the Jacobins.  There are rumors of a terrible discovery made by Carnot, of a desperate resolution taken by Tallien.  Men watching behind the scenes see that the last days of the Terror are at hand.  If Robespierre is beaten in the approaching struggle, you are saved—­for the new reign must be a Reign of Mercy.  If he conquers, I have only put off the date of your death and your sister’s, and have laid my own neck under the axe.  Those are your chances—­this is all I can do.”

He paused, and Trudaine again endeavored to speak such words as might show that he was not unworthy of the deadly risk which Lomaque was prepared to encounter.  But once more the chief agent peremptorily and irritably interposed: 

“I tell you, for the third time,” he said, “I will listen to no expressions of gratitude from you till I know when I deserve them.  It is true that I recollect your father’s timely kindness to me—­true that I have not forgotten what passed, five years since at your house by the river-side.  I remember everything, down to what you would consider the veriest trifle—­that cup of coffee, for instance, which your sister kept hot for me.  I told you then that you would think better of me some day.  I know that you do now.  But this is not all.  You want to glorify me to my face for risking my life for you.  I won’t hear you, because my risk is of the paltriest kind.  I am weary of my life.  I can’t look back to it with pleasure.  I am too old to look forward to what is left of it with hope.  There was something in that night at your house before the wedding—­something in what you said, in what your sister did—­which altered me.  I have had my days of gloom and self-reproach, from time to time, since then.  I have sickened at my slavery, and subjection, and duplicity, and cringing, first under one master then under another.  I have longed to look back at my life, and comfort