And away went the little clump of guardsmen with the sergeant in the rear.

The Huguenot had stood in the background, grave and composed, without any sign of exultation, during this sudden reversal of fortune; but when the soldiers were gone, he and the young officer turned warmly upon each other.

“Amory, I had not hoped to see you!”

“Nor I you, uncle.  What, in the name of wonder, brings you to Versailles?”

“My wrongs, Amory.  The hand of the wicked is heavy upon us, and whom can we turn to save only the king?”

The young officer shook his head.  “The king is at heart a good man,” said he.  “But he can only see the world through the glasses which are held before him.  You have nothing to hope from him.”

“He spurned me from his presence.”

“Did he ask your name?”

“He did, and I gave it.”

The young guardsman whistled.  “Let us walk to the gate,” said he.  “By my faith, if my kinsmen are to come and bandy arguments with the king, it may not be long before my company finds itself without its captain.”

“The king would not couple us together.  But indeed, nephew, it is strange to me how you can live in this house of Baal and yet bow down to no false gods.”

“I keep my belief in my own heart.”

The older man shook his head gravely.

“Your ways lie along a very narrow path,” said he, “with temptation and danger ever at your feet.  It is hard for you to walk with the Lord, Amory, and yet go hand in hand with the persecutors of His people.”

“Tut, uncle!” said the young man impatiently.  “I am a soldier of the king’s, and I am willing to let the black gown and the white surplice settle these matters between them.  Let me live in honour and die in my duty, and I am content to wait to know the rest.”

“Content, too, to live in palaces, and eat from fine linen,” said the Huguenot bitterly, “when the hands of the wicked are heavy upon your kinsfolk, and there is a breaking of phials, and a pouring forth of tribulation, and a wailing and a weeping throughout the land.”

“What is amiss, then?” asked the young soldier, who was somewhat mystified by the scriptural language in use among the French Calvinists of the day.

“Twenty men of Moab have been quartered upon me, with one Dalbert, their captain, who has long been a scourge to Israel.”

“Captain Claude Dalbert, of the Languedoc Dragoons?  I have already some small score to settle with him.”

“Ay, and the scattered remnant has also a score against this murderous dog and self-seeking Ziphite.”

“What has he done, then?”

“His men are over my house like moths in a cloth bale.  No place is free from them.  He sits in the room which should be mine, his great boots on my Spanish leather chairs, his pipe in his mouth, his wine-pot at his elbow, and his talk a hissing and an abomination.  He has beaten old Pierre of the warehouse.”