kingdom for her son, the father judged it right to take his boy to
join her, and put in practice the motto of their ancestors. The baron
started in the dead of night, saying no word to his wife, who might
perhaps have weakened him; taking his son under fire as if to a fete,
and Gasselin, his only vassal, who followed him joyfully. The three
men of the family were absent for three months without sending news of
their whereabouts to the baroness, who never read the "Quotidienne"
without trembling from line to line, nor to his old blind sister,
heroically erect, whose nerve never faltered for an instance as she
heard that paper read. The three guns hanging to the walls had
therefore seen service recently. The baron, who considered the
enterprise useless, left the region before the affair of La
Penissiere, or the house of Guenic would probably have ended in that
hecatomb.

When, on a stormy night after parting from MADAME, the father, son,
and servant returned to the house in Guerande, they took their friends
and the baroness and old Mademoiselle du Guenic by surprise, although
the latter, by the exercise of senses with which the blind are gifted,
recognized the steps of the three men in the little lane leading to
the house. The baron looked round upon the circle of his anxious
friends, who were seated beside the little table lighted by the
antique lamp, and said in a tremulous voice, while Gasselin replaced
the three guns and the sabres in their places, these words of feudal
simplicity:--

"The barons did not all do their duty."

Then, having kissed his wife and sister, he sat down in his old
arm-chair and ordered supper to be brought for his son, for Gasselin,