the cottage, and, standing in the doorway, said to some one within:

"May I come in also, Sieur de Mauprat?"

Above the pleasant welcome of a quavering voice came another, soft and
clear, in pure French:

"Thou art always welcome, without asking, as thou knowest, Ro."

"Then I'll go and fetch my tool-basket first," Ranulph said cheerily, his
heart beating more quickly, and, turning, he walked across the Place.




CHAPTER VI

The cottage in which Guida lived at the Place du Vier Prison was in
jocund contrast to the dungeon from which the Chevalier Orvilliers du
Champsavoys de Beaumanoir had complacently issued. Even in the hot
summer the prison walls dripped moisture, for the mortar had been made of
wet sea-sand, which never dried, and beneath the gloomy tenement of crime
a dark stream flowed to the sea. But the walls of the cottage were dry,
for, many years before, Guida's mother had herself seen it built from
cellar-rock to the linked initials over the doorway, stone by stone, and
every corner of it was as free from damp as the mielles stretching in
sandy desolation behind to the Mont es Pendus, where the law had its way
with the necks of criminals.

In early childhood Madame Landresse had come with her father into exile