The Yellow Poppy. D. K. Broster

last to an end, and the opponents added up their scores.

      “You have won, Comte,” said the bandaged player’s adversary, leaning back in his chair. The candle-light which threw up his companion’s somewhat harsh features shone in his case on a nondescript round face with no salient characteristics. By this and by his peasant’s attire he might well have been a small farmer; but on the other, him addressed as “Comte,” the gaily embroidered Breton vest and short coat sat less naturally.

      “Yes, I suppose I have,” returned the latter. He drew out his watch and frowned. “They ought really to be here by now,” he observed.

      “I doubt if it is quite dark enough outside,” replied his late adversary. “Le Blé-aux-Champs would hardly risk bringing M. de Kersaint into Hennebont while light remained.”

      “I wish he had not gone to Scaër,” muttered the other.

      “You do not think that anything has happened to M. le Marquis, do you, sir?” asked Roland de Céligny.

      “No,” replied M. de Kersaint’s second-in-command. “I will not believe in misfortune; it is the way to bring it about.”

      “Perhaps this is they,” suggested Artamène de la Vergne, the youth with his arm in a sling, as a step was heard on the echoing stairs. And even the silent reader lifted his head from his book to listen.

      But the moment of suspense which followed was not lightened when the door opened and old M. Charlot, the furniture-dealer, himself appeared on the threshold, candle in hand, tinted spectacles on nose. In a silence of expectancy he came in and shut the door carefully behind him, while five pairs of eyes stared at him uneasily.

      “Gentlemen,” he began in a cautious voice, looking round on the forms ensconced among his shadowy furniture, “is not one of you a priest?”

      The second piquet-player bent forward. “Yes, I am,” he surprisingly admitted. “Do you want me?”

      “There is an old lady very ill next door, Monsieur l’Abbé, an old Mlle Magny, who has been a respected inhabitant of this town for many years. It is not that she wants a confessor or the Last Sacraments, because she had them two or three days ago; it is that to-night she is wandering so much that her niece, who looks after her, came in to me about it just now in great distress. The old lady seems to have something on her mind, and Mme Leclerc thought that if she could get a priest, an insermenté, of course——”

      The Abbé who looked so little of an Abbé interrupted. “I am quite ready to go to her, Monsieur Charlot, if it is necessary, but I should have thought that, rather than summon a stranger, the poor lady’s relatives would have had recourse to the priest who confessed her the other day.”

      “Yes, mon père,” replied the old man, “but you see he lives very retired outside the town since Fructidor, and there is always a certain risk for him in coming, and seeing that you were on the spot, and not known here for a priest . . .”

      The word “risk” appeared to have decided the question, for at it the Abbé in the peasant’s dress had risen.

      “I will come at once,” he said without more ado, and walked round an intervening barrier of upturned chairs.

      “That is very good of your reverence,” said M. Charlot in a tone of relief, moving towards the door. “She has been an excellent Christian in her time, that poor lady, and shrewd enough too, but now she lies there, so her niece says, talking continually of some place—or person, maybe—called Mirabel, and of a wedding. And nothing——”

      “Mirabel!” ejaculated the Abbé, stopping short.

      “O, Monsieur l’Abbé!” exclaimed M. Charlot, struck by his tone, “if you know something about this Mirabel, then surely the good God has sent you to the poor soul! I will take you there at once.”

      He opened the door for the priest, who went through it without another word. None of the three young men, all watching these two protagonists, noticed that the wounded piquet-player also had risen abruptly from his seat at the mention of the name which had so affected his companion, had stared after them a second or two, and that he now let himself fall into his chair again with a despondent gesture, and took his bandaged head between his hands.

      “Now the Abbé’s got a job to occupy him,” said Artamène de la Vergne in a sleepy voice. “I wish I had; or that M. de Kersaint and Le Blé-aux-Champs would arrive quickly, so that I could go to sleep without the prospect of being waked up again immediately.”

      “The true campaigner can sleep at any time, and for any length of time,” remarked Roland complacently. “It is early yet, at least I think so. My watch has stopped.”

      “And mine is lost,” responded the Chevalier de la Vergne. “Lucien is sure to have his, and it is sure to be correct. Ask him the time.”

      “Lucien!” said Roland. No answer from the reader.

      “Lucien, deaf adder!” supplemented Artamène.

      “I believe he is asleep,” muttered the Vicomte de Céligny, and by a snake-like elongation of body and arm he contrived to reach a leg of the student’s chair and to shake the same.

      “I wish you were asleep!” exclaimed his victim, lifting a mildly exasperated face. “What in Heaven’s name do you want?”

      “The time, dear friend.”

      Lucien du Boisfossé pulled the watch from his fob. “A quarter—no, seventeen minutes past nine.”

      “What are you reading?” demanded Artamène.

      “The Æneid of Virgil,” replied Lucien, his eyes on the page again.

      The questioner gave an exclamation, almost of horror. “Ye gods! He is reading Latin—for amusement!”

      “A quarter past nine,” remarked Roland reflectively. “This time yesterday I was——”

      “Don’t chatter so, Roland le preux! You disturb our Latinist . . . and also,” added Artamène in a lower tone, “run the risk of breaking into M. de Brencourt’s meditations. Look at him!”

      The bandaged piquet-player, who still sat by the table, seemed indeed sunk in a profound abstraction, letting the idle cards fall one by one from his fingers. It was plain that he did not know what he was doing.

      “I wager he is thinking of a woman,” whispered Artamène, bringing himself nearer to his friend. “It seems a quieting occupation; suppose we think of one too! But on whom shall I fix my thoughts . . . and you, Roland?”

      A slight flush, invisible in the poor light, dyed young de Céligny’s cheek as he answered, with a suspicion of embarrassment, “I will think of that poor old lady next door. Will the Abbé exorcise her, do you think, from the spell of . . . what was it—Mirabel? And, by the way, what is Mirabel?”

      “The name of a kind of plum, ignoramus,” replied Lucien du Boisfossé unexpectedly. He yawned as he spoke.

      “Plainly our Lucien has been studying the Georgics also,” commented Artamène.

      “An encyclopaedia would be more to the point!” retorted Roland. And raising his voice, he said, “Comte, what is Mirabel?”

      The older man heard, even with a little start. He laid down the cards and came out of his reverie.

      “Mirabel, gentlemen, is the name of a property and château near Paris, the château that was begun for François I. You may have heard of it. It belongs, or belonged, to the Duc de Trélan.”

      “Trélan,” observed the young Chevalier de la Vergne reflectively. “I seem to remember the name in connection with the prison massacres in September, ’92. He was killed in them, I think?”

      “No,” replied the Comte de Brencourt sombrely. “He was never in prison. He had emigrated. It was his wife who was butchered—with Mme de Lamballe.”

      “Morbleu!”