like a thing of life. But it was no thing of life, as Tignonville saw
with a shudder when they passed him. The object of their sport was the
naked body of a child, an infant!

His gorge rose at the sight. Fear such as he had not before experienced
chilled his marrow. This was hate indeed, a hate before which the strong
man quailed; the hate of which Mademoiselle had spoken when she said that
the babes crossed themselves at her passing, and the houses tottered to
fall upon her!

He paused a minute to recover himself, so deeply had the sight moved him;
and as he stood, he wondered if that hate already had its cold eye fixed
on him. Instinctively his gaze searched the opposite wall, but save for
two small double-grated windows it was blind; time-stained and
stone-built, dark with the ordure of the city lane, it seemed but the
back of a house, which looked another way. The outer gates of an arched
doorway were open, and a loaded haycart, touching either side and
brushing the arch above, blocked the passage. His gaze, leaving the
windows, dropped to this--he scanned it a moment; and on a sudden he
stiffened. Between the hay and the arch a hand flickered an instant,
then vanished.

Tignonville stared. At first he thought his eyes had tricked him. Then
the hand appeared again, and this time it conveyed an unmistakable
invitation. It is not from the unknown or the hidden that the fugitive
has aught to fear, and Tignonville, after casting a glance down the
lane--which revealed a single man standing with his face the other
way--slipped across and pushed between the hay and the wall. He coughed.

A voice whispered to him to climb up; a friendly hand clutched him in the