circumstances may be combined to prove an innocent man guilty on apparently the clearest evidence: It set forth that, on the night of the murders, I had left the ship Austerlitz from Madeira, between eleven and twelve o'clock; that I had been accompanied to within a few yards of my domicile by Louis d'Egville, who there left me, and went to his own home, where he was proved to have arrived before midnight; that from that time until three o'clock the following morning nothing was seen or heard of me; but at that hour I woke the Talbot family to tell them of what had happened; that the commissary of police had found me asleep when he arrived at the scene of the crime, as if nothing had happened; and that he had found my clothes, saturated with blood in several places, lying on a chair beside the bed; that I had effected an entrance into the house in a surreptitious manner, was proved by my coat having been found on the top of the wall; that I had then silently drawn myself up to the balcony, which none but a man possessing great muscular strength, such as I was known to possess, could have accomplished; and that I had then with a mallet, which was proved, by the evidence of the servants, to have always been kept in a toolhouse in the garden, struck Madame Evrart on the back of the head, as she sat at her writing-table, and beaten in her skull, and all this so suddenly that she had not had time to cry out, and had even retained her position in her chair, where she was found seated, with her face resting on her hands, which lay on the table before her. Then I had descended to the lower rooms with the bloody instrument in my hand, and had killed M. Evrart as he was endeavouring to make his escape by the street-door, in the same way as I had already killed his wife, by striking him on the head with the mallet and fracturing the skull, leaving the weapon with which I had committed the murders lying on the floor beside him. As regarded the interval which had elapsed between my entering the house and giving the alarm, God and myself alone could tell how I had employed it; but it was to be presumed that I had spent it in furtherance of the objects which had induced me to commit the crimes with which I stood charged. There was no evidence on that point, because the servants, who were two sisters, had obtained leave from their mistress on the morning of the murder to go to a village a few miles distant to attend their mother's funeral, and did not return until the following day. Such in substance was the statement of the crownprosecutor, made without invective, and without any appearance of bias against me. At its close, I noticed several of my friends glanced at me doubtfully, as if their faith in my innocence had been shaken, and I began then to realise the dangers of my position. As soon as the few witnesses had been examined to prove the facts stated, my counsel rose to address the court on my behalf. He gave my version of the affair, dwelt on the absurdity of even supposing that I, their adopted son, with whom they had never had a dispute, could have been guilty of the horrible crime of murdering them. He insisted strongly on the utter absence of any motive I could have had, and concluded by denouncing in severe terms the harsh conduct of the authorities in seizing and imprisoning me upon no other evidence than appearances, which I had so satisfactorily explained. The sympathy of those present in my behalf was plainly shewn by the attention with which every word uttered by him was listened to. There was not a sound to be heard beside his voice, and if he had stopped when he had finished stating my case instead of attacking the authorities, it is possible that the jury might have been called upon for their decision at once, and have given a verdict in my favour; but, unfortunately, political feeling was strong in France in those days, and Langenis was too ardent a partisan of the opposition, and too weak-minded to forego the opportunity of displaying his talent in oratorical invective. Whether this was really the cause, I know not; but while he was yet speaking, I noticed the official whose duty it was to conduct the prosecution, give a slip of paper to one of the officers of the court, who, upon my counsel resuming his seat, proceeded to read from it a list of names. Most of the persons named were in court, and when interrogated by the president as to whether they had ever heard M. Evrart express dissatisfaction with my conduct, they admitted that they had not, until recently; but that on several occasions during my absence, he had expressed himself very strongly on the subject of my desire for a sea-faring life, and his determination to oppose my wishes with all his power, for that his wife had done nothing but cry ever since I had gone away, and had made his home miserable. Two other witnesses proved that I was aware that both the murdered man and his wife had made a will bequeathing me the whole of the property of each on their deaths; and one or two others were called to prove that I had admitted that the streetdoor was fastened; and the police-agents to shew that there was no trace either in the shape of broken glass or feet-marks of any persons having escaped by the back-door; though, in answer to a question from my counsel, they acknowledged that persons might have passed along the gravel-path to a little door in the wall, and have let themselves out that way, but they had found this door locked, and the key lying on the floor in Madame Evrart's sitting-room. The effect of Langenis's attack on the authorities was only too apparent in the summing-up of the judge. Justice was not done me on the score of my irreproachable antecedents, and my youth was urged rather as an aggravation of my crime. When the jury had retired, I buried my face in my handkerchief, and nearly choked myself in my efforts to prevent my sobs from being heard, for I was wounded to the heart by hearing myself spoken of as an assassin. How long the jury seemed absent! At last there was a hush, for an officer of the court appeared conducting the jury. Can anybody conceive the intense dread with which I waited for their verdict? It was guilty, with extenuating circumstances based on my youth. I believe the presiding judge stretched a point in my favour, when he only sentenced me to twenty years of Travaux forcés; but for any difference it made to me at the time he might have sentenced me, as the jailer tried to comfort me by telling me he might have done, à perpétuité. My first place of confinement was the jail-infirmary, where I had plenty of time to grieve over the injustice that had been done me, and to mourn the loss of my kind friends and the suffering of my poor mother. The appeal against the decision made on my behalf by my counsel was rejected; and my next move was to the galleys. Now began my experience of what was implied in the sentence of travaux forcés. I had thought of hard labour with indifference, if not with a certain degree of satisfaction, for muscular exertion was a necessity for me, and a relief from incessant thought; but I was not prepared for association with the awful companions which that sentence involved, nor for the ruffianly and brutal treatment which I received from the officials. The convicts were divided into gangs of ten, and when the labours of the day were over, we were driven into a cell, where our rations of coarse rye-bread-a great portion of which might have been saw-dust, as it was commonly said to be, for aught that appeared to the contrary-had been placed ready for us. The guard of soldiers, with muskets loaded and bayonets fixed, were drawn up just inside the door while the jailer poured out the soup into the tin mug allotted to each prisoner; and when he had finished this, the door was locked and secured, and the felons in the cell were left to their own devices until a certain hour the following morning, varying according to the time of year. Great God! what horrors were perpetrated during those hours of darkness. Their conversation was of the crimes they had committed, and so far from trying to soften them in the telling, they heightened them, as I believe, for the purpose of producing a greater sensation. Their language chilled my very blood at first; but, after a time, it affected me no more than a tale fifty times told. The gang in which I was first placed consisted of a man who had murdered his father; another, who had stabbed a friend in a wine-shop; a Corsican, who had assassinated a girl through jealousy; three noted bad characters, convicted of robberies with violence; a vile old ruffian, who boasted that on the very day he had been liberated from prison, he had cut the throat of a young girl; the younger of two brothers, who had been convicted of drowning their blind sister to save the expense of her maintenance; a man who was said to have murdered nine persons, including a jailer, but who never spoke a single word in my hearing during the three years that he remained in the same cell; and myself. I escaped personal molestation for the first two or three nights by feigning illness. The fetters which bound every two or three of us together during the day were unlocked as we entered our cell, and each was left detached until the following morning, so that I was able to lie down on the bench which served as a bed, turn my head to the wall, and pretend to be asleep. It was summer at this time, and a certain amount of light was admitted into the cell through two small grated openings in the wall for about two hours after we were turned into the den. As soon as my associates had finished their soup, they began to gamble in a way peculiar to themselves for portions of the bread they had reserved for this purpose. When it became too dark to continue this, they drew together, and began to talk. Much of their language being argot, I did not understand all that was said, but I was too intimately acquainted with the French spoken by all classes not to be able to follow the different speakers; and but for the horrible blasphemies they uttered at almost every instant, I believe I should have felt interested in some of the tales they told of their past life. As it was, I shuddered, and dreaded the arrival of the moment when it might please one of the more sensitive of the ruffians to regard my keeping aloof from them as an evidence of pride. The time was not long in coming; but I had had time to learn from their conversation so much of their antecedents as enabled me to form some idea of their individual characters, and to decide on the course of action I should take when the occasion came. From the first day I entered the bagne, either by accident, or more likely from wanton brutality on the part of the jailers, I had been fastened to the old ruffian who had murdered the girl. Though talking was forbidden while at work, it was impossible to prevent those chained together from speaking to each other in a low voice, and my chain-mate, as he was called, had frequently spoken to me, while I had steadily abstained from replying. One night, after supper had been finished, this fellow stood forward and made a kind of oration, stating his griefs against me. He charged me with being too proud to associate with my brethren in captivity, and so forth, and finished by calling upon me for explanations and apologies. I made no answer, but waited as resolutely as I could for what would follow. They formed themselves into a mock court, the president of which called upon me for my defence; and desired me to state the circumstance to which they were indebted for the honour of my presence among them. At first, I thought of remaining silent, but a moment's reflection convinced me that it would be better once for all to take up a position and adhere to it. I therefore, in as few words as possible, replied that I was in there because I had been convicted of having killed my father and mother; that as we had all an equal right to do what we pleased while we were in the cell, I claimed the right for myself of remaining silent, or of speaking, whichever I pleased. After some conversation amongst themselves, the pretended judge pronounced sentence. It does not matter what this sentence was, but I was determined to resist its infliction to the last gasp. Already there was a movement towards me on the part of five or six of the band, the fellow who had acted as president keeping his seat on the bench. He was the man who had murdered his father, and exercised a good deal of influence over the rest on the ground of his being the senior occupant of the cell, and by far the most powerful among them in physical strength. I made a rush at him before the others were aware of my intention, and he had just time to rise to his feet and put up his hands before falling to the ground, his head striking it with such force as to be distinctly heard, although the floor was nothing but an earthen one. I thought this would intimidate the others, but it did not, for making a rush at me altogether, I was so wedged in, that I had not room to use my arms. I felt that my time had come, and that further resistance would be of no use; still this did not prevent me from continuing to resist with all my might; at last, one of the brutes got hold of the upper part of my right arm with his teeth, and held it so firmly that I could not get it away from him. Three or four hands were pressing on my throat, when there was a report of a gun in the cell, something liquid spirted into my face, which caused me to close my eyes, and when I opened them again, my assailants had dispersed to their respective benches, all except one man, who lay at my feet, with the blood pouring from his broken forehead, and Le Muet, who had not joined in the attack upon me, and was now standing by the celldoor. It was evident that the gun had been fired by one of the guard at random, to put an end to the disturbance; but nobody entered the cell to see if any of us had been hurt, so that I could make no appeal to the jailer to be removed to another place. All that night I sat on my bench with my back against the wall, prepared to defend myself in the event of another attack being made upon me. I dared not go to sleep, and yet I more than once found myself growing so drowsy that it required my utmost efforts to prevent my doing so. I tried to distinguish the figure of the dead man, thinking that the horror inspired would keep me wakeful; but it is astonishing how little of that feeling is awakened by the contemplation of the corpse of one who has been killed in an attack on our own proper person. However, the weary night came to an end at last. At the usual hour every one rolled from his bench, except the individual who had officiated as judge the night before, and the corpse of him who had been shot, which lay just as it had fallen. I watched their movements narrowly, but they seemed to take very little notice of me. When the turnkey threw open the door, I stood back until the last, for fear of what might happen to me if I were mixed up with the rest. Just before me was Le Muet, but the jailer put his hand on his shoulder as he was passing out, and pushed him roughly back, pointing at the corpse, and telling him to pick it up, and ordered me to go on with the rest. Önce in the course of the day I had an opportunity of speaking to an official of some importance, and tried to explain what had taken place, and my fears that the attack upon me would be renewed; but he ordered me, in a brutal tone, to be silent; that I had I began to hope that this might be continued as some compensation for my irreproachable conduct, for my reflections while in that horrible hole I have described had led me to perceive how useless would be any attempt at resistance, and that I ought to bear in mind the point of view from which the official mind trol my temper and not lay myself open to punishment for insubordination, did not prevent me from suffering terribly when I was subjected to the brutal insolence of the officials; and this was not unfrequently the case, for they were so accustomed to treat those under their authority with such peremptory savageness, that they made no distinction between those who did their work cheerfully, and those who did it with dogged reluctance. My hope that I might be left alone was soon upset. One morning, a man but little older than myself, but more heavily ironed, was linked to me. We examined each other's faces attentively. He had a hard and equivocal, though not absolutely bad expression of countenance, and I could not help feeling a kind of interest in learning his antecedents. The predominant expression of his countenance, however, as he looked at me, was perplexity. He did not attempt that day to disobey the rule which forbade talking, but he made up for his silence when we were shut up in our cell for the night. He answered all questions readily, and it was soon known that he had got on extra fetters, because he had once succeeded in making his escape from the prison in which he had been confined before being sent here. The particular offence for which he had been sent here was that of nearly killing a gamekeeper; but, according to his own shewing, that was not worse than some other offences of which he had been guilty: on the whole, however, he might have been worse. nothing more to fear, and that I was too worthy of the company I was in to be removed elsewhere. My blood boiled at this treatment, for I had not yet realised that, however innocent I might know myself to be, to others I must appear as the murderer of two persons who had shewn me nothing but kindness. I replied in a way which so enraged this func-must regard me. This, though it enabled me to contionary that, after heaping upon me a volley of curses, he ordered me to be taken where I certainly should not have cause to complain of being molested. The idea which suggested itself to his mind as he gave this order seemed to mollify him, for he laughed and walked away. That night, instead of being marched back to the same cell with the rest of the gang, I was shut up alone in a dungeon where there was no light whatever, so that I passed at once from daylight to total darkness. Everything I touched was wet, and the stench was so strong that I gasped for breath for some time after the door was shut. Tired with the hard day's work I had undergone, I groped my way round the dungeon in search of a place to lie upon, like that to which I had been accustomed for the last few nights, but could feel nothing but the slimy stones going straight to the ground. There being no choice in the matter except standing, I lay down on the filthy floor, and had fallen sound asleep, when I was disturbed by a light shining full on my face. I heard a voice ejaculate: Pauvre jeune homme!' I looked at the man who held the lantern without speaking, and he was equally silent, but pointed to the ground beside me. I turned over, and found that he had brought me the usual piece of bread, but no soup, only water, which I liked just as well. He did not wait while I ate it, but having called my attention to it, he took the light away, and left me to do that in the dark. The next day I was restored to the cell in which I had been first placed, my chain-companion being now Le Muet. So far this was an absolute improvement in my condition, for under the circumstances, there was nothing I desired more than to be spared the conversation of a brutal companion. Not the slightest inquiry was ever made, so far as I know, as to the disturbance of the previous night; whether, which is very probable, we were regarded as such a set of brutal ruffians that it mattered little how one of us finished his career, and that the jailers had means of overhearing what passed in the cells without entering them, which I think they must have had, for I could never discover the opening through which the gun had been fired; or whether, as I have sometimes thought since, the mute earned a mitigation of his sentence by acting as a spy, I cannot say, but no allusion was ever made to the death of the one who was shot, or the ultimate fate of the fellow who had officiated as president, who disappeared from the cell the same day with the corpse. I fully expected that I should be the object of another and more systematic attack, but this was not to be; and as to any single-handed onset, I had nothing to fear on that score, seeing that they had no weapons. Jeers and insults I of course had to encounter, but these I never noticed so long as they were confined to words, and when they went beyond this I had recourse to remedies which were the only effectual ones in dealing with wretches of their species. For three years I worked on in silence almost as profound as that of the man who was chained to me, the only speech I held being at rare intervals with the directors of the works on which we were employed. At the end of that time my companion disappeared, but whether he was liberated or sent abroad, I never heard. Strange as it may seem, notwithstanding the crimes of which he had been guilty, I had become so accustomed to his presence, that I felt sorry when he was sent away. Perhaps, too, the fear that the individual who would take his place would be less easy to control, might have some share in inspiring this feeling. For some days I was left alone, and I hate croaking, and feel a certain contempt for a man who utters fruitless complaints; so I will say very little more of my sufferings, and come as rapidly as I can to the period when I became once more a free man. My length of service did not bring with it any alleviation of my condition. My health did not suffer much, however, in consequence, I suppose, of my being almost always in the open air, and engaged in hard manual labour; but, in spite of my utmost efforts, I could not prevent my mind from frequently dwelling on the different career I might have been pursuing had I followed my friends' wishes, and never undertaken that fatal voyage. I had been a prisoner for fifteen years, when one Saturday afternoon, as we were sweeping up the yards previous to leaving off work for the day, I was a little startled by the hasty way in which the turnkey came up to me and unlocked the fetter on my wrist. When he had done this, a man who had accompanied him, and whom I had scarcely noticed, came close to me and offered me his hand. I looked intently at him, but though my memory of faces is remarkably good, it was some time before I could trace in the changed face before me the likeness of my friend and counsel, Langenis. We shook hands, with feelings on my side which I did not attempt to analyse. I saw in his changed appearance my youth already gone. The recollection of the dreams of happiness I had once formed, which his presence revived only to prove how hopeless now was their fulfilment, gave me such acute anguish, that for the moment I should have felt grateful if death had smitten me where I stood. My philosophy (by which I mean something that appears to me too sacred to be mentioned in speaking of matters of common life) restored my self-command. It had never occurred to me that his visit could have any other motive than a desire to take advantage of his presence in the town to inquire whether I were alive or dead; but when the turnkey presented the governor's compliments, and requested that I would step up to his apartments, it struck me instantly that my innocence had been at last discovered; for though my good-conduct might have procured for me a remission of part of my sentence, that remission would not have procured for me a message from the governor couched in such terms. Try all I could, I found it difficult to walk firmly. The feelings of anger at the injustice of which I had been the victim, the thought of the happiness I had been so unjustly deprived of, and the humiliations and moral tortures to which for fifteen years I had been subjected, all of which I had laboured so resolutely to crush out of my memory, overwhelmed me like a flood. A deadly faintness came over me, and had I not caught hold of Langenis's arm, I should have fallen to the ground. There were several gangs of convicts assembled in front of the governor's house, and among them that of which I formed part. The governor himself stood there with several of the higher officials, and came forward to meet me, and shook me heartily by the hand, congratulated me on my innocence being at last discovered, and regretted that I had been made to suffer so much undeservedly. He then called the locksmith to remove the fetters from my legs. The latter was about to unlock them, but the other exclaimed passionately: Break them! break them! The irons of an innocent man should be broken, and not opened like those of a pardoned thief!' When this had been done, the governor took me by the arm and led me into his house, followed by several other persons. I was very warmly congratulated by the ladies present, and, indeed, by everybody whom I came near; but we soon retired into the governor's private office that I might receive an account of the manner in which my innocence had been discovered, and which will not take long to relate. I copy it from the statement given me by Langenis. "The Père Phillippart having prepared the mind of Agnes Desnoyers for the announcement that her illness must inevitably end fatally, exhorted her to make full confession of her sins, that she might receive absolution before departing from the world. For some time she steadily refused, and obstacles were thrown in the way of the good father having access to her by Philippe Loret, who scarcely ever left her. Very early one morning Père Phillippart was returning from the death-bed of one of his congregation, and in doing so he passed Loret's cottage. There was a light in the sick woman's room, and it occurred to him that she might be in her last agonies; he therefore tried the door, and found that it was not fastened, and entering, he walked upstairs. She was quite sensible, and knew him directly, and asked him eagerly if he thought she could live many hours longer. There was a great change for the worse in her appearance since he last saw her, so he told her he thought not. She then begged him very earnestly to receive her confession at once, before Loret's return. This he did; but there was one portion of it having reference to the murder of M. and Madame Evrart, which he told her ought to be put in writing and signed by her, inasmuch as the proof of the innocence of an individual wrongly convicted depended upon it. To this, after much persuasion, she consented. The following is the statement written by the priest at her dictation, and signed by her: "On the morning of the day on which M. and Madame Evrart were murdered, Madame Evrart called here [at the cottage], and told me that she had given both her servants leave to go home to attend their mother's funeral, and asked me if I would come up to her house and dress the dinner. I promised I would, and as soon as Philippe Loret came in I told him where I was going. He made no objection, and I went. Madame let me in, and I found everything in the house required for the dinner, so that I had no occasion to go out during the day. They dined at five o'clock, and afterwards madame went upstairs to her room. Monsieur was not well, and did not go out; and when I took up coffee, which was at about eight o'clock, he was playing at chess with madame in her room. It was soon after this I heard Philippe calling me, and I went to the window to see what he wanted. He told me he had a message for M. Evrart, but that he wanted to speak to me first, and that I must open the door quietly and let him in. Madame, who seemed very nervous, had ordered me to fasten the streetdoor very carefully; so after I had let him in, and a young man who was with him, I put up all the fastenings again, and they followed me into the kitchen. Philippe asked me several questions about where M. and Madame Evrart were, and, not thinking any harm, I told him. In a little while, I heard monsieur come down stairs, and we saw him go towards the bottom of the garden. It was getting dark then, but we could see that he was smoking. In a minute or two he came indoors. Philippe took a hammer out of his pocket, but the other man said something to him, and he put it back, and picked up a mallet which lay on the floor. Then they both took off their shoes, and I got frightened; but I did not know what they were going to do. There was a short passage between the kitchen and the hall, and I followed them to see what would happen. M. Evrart was standing with his back to the passage, looking at the street-door. Philippe crept close to him, and struck him on the back of the head with the mallet, and he fell on his face on the floor; then he struck him again several times on the head, and left the mallet beside him, and went upstairs. I followed him, for I was afraid to remain alone near the dead body. When we went into madame's room, she was sitting in her chair, her hands on the table, and her face resting on her hands as if she were asleep; only I could see she was dead, because the blood was running from her hair in little streams on to the floor. It was not Philippe who killed her, for she was dead before he went into the room, but the man who came with him, and whom we found searching in a desk which stood on the table. I begged Philippe to let me out of the house, but he refused, and forced me to help them to search the drawers and other places, where it was likely that valuable things might be kept. They opened these places if they happened to be locked with the bunch of keys I had often seen hanging from madame's waist, and when they had finished, I was made to put the things they had thrown on the floor back carefully, as if they had not been disturbed. I daresay it was a little after ten o'clock when we went into the garden to leave the place. Philippe pulled the house-door to, which fastened itself, then opened the little door in the wall, and he and the other man stood behind it, while I looked out to see if anybody was in the street. There was nobody to be seen, and Philippe told the other man to go on before to his house; then he shut the door and locked it, and threw the key towards the open window of Madame Evrart's room. "We went straight along the road until we came to the footpath leading across the fields to our cottage, so that we got home without meeting anybody. I fell down two or three times going along, for I was crying, so that I could not see. When we got home, we found the man who had murdered madame waiting for us. Philippe told me to make haste and get the supper ready, while he and André went to see if the boat was lying-off. He came back in about an hour alone, and said that André was watching, and would most likely go on board after he had helped to land the cargo in the cave. I saw there was blood on his blouse and on his hands, and splashes of it on his face. I began to cry again, and he took off his blouse and put it in the fire, and washed his hands and face. He was very kind to me, and kissed me very much. I went to bed, but he did not, as he said the Volage's boat would come in with the tide. I never saw André afterwards, but if you search the ground under the dung-heap, behind the arbour, you will find his body. "For more than three months from this night I never went outside our garden, for fear somebody might speak to me about the murder; and it was nearly two years afterwards before I heard that young M. Charles had been sent to the galleys for murdering his father and mother. I told Philippe when I got home what I had heard, and it was then he told me that he and André had quarrelled about the money and had fought; that André had tried to stab him, and he had killed him in the scuffle, and buried him behind the arbour. "I liked M. Charles very much-he was so young and gay, and used to speak to me so kindly, and often brought me pastry and fruit when he came to give orders about his boat; but I loved Philippe like my own soul, and I could not betray him to death, and he knew it, and has always been as kind to me as any man could be; but now that I am about to appear before the great God I must speak, and I have told the whole truth. (Signed) "AGNES DESNOYERS." The Père Phillippart was still praying beside the dying woman when Loret entered the room. The ink was still on the table, and he seemed to comprehend at a glance what had occurred. He came to the bedside and looked steadily at the woman. The poor creature put her hand towards him and murmured in a low tone: "I am dying, my Philippe." After a moment's hesitation, he knelt down by the bedside, and took the hand in his which she offered him, kissed it, and held it for some minutes. Then he laid it on the bed, rose and kissed her repeatedly on the face, and quietly left the room. All this time the priest continued to pray, and when at last he spoke to the woman and receiving no answer, laid his hand on her forehead, he found that only the earthly shell remained the immortal part had entered upon a new phase of existence. He gently drew down the eyelids, and was about to leave the room, when he found that the door was fastened, and all his strength was insufficient to force it open. He went to the window, but this was too narrow for him to get through, even if it had not been too high for a man of his age to drop from; and here he remained waiting for somebody to pass to whom he might appeal for assistance. The cottage being beside the sea, and removed a considerable distance from any other, it was not much a matter of surprise to him that hour after hour passed by without his seeing anybody. The opportunity came at last, however; but it was near sunset before he was able to lay the confession before the authorities, so that very little could be done in searching for Loret that night. At the first glimpse of daylight the following morning, the principal authority of the town, myself [Langenis], and a body of gens d'armes entered Loret's cottage. We found a woman there whom the priest had sent up the preceding night, but she had seen nothing of the man of whom we were in search. The whole day was spent in looking for him without success, and hitherto he has escaped apprehension. The heap of refuse behind the arbour was removed, and the ground dug up, and about a métre below the surface we found the skeleton of a man, to which still adhered fragments of clothes. In the course of the search we discovered a passage running down into the ground for some distance. It was very steep, and brought us out at last to a small platform, the front of which was planted with shrubs. This platform was on a kind of promontory, up to which the tide flowed to a considerable depth at highwater. One of the gens d'armes suggested the use to which this passage was put, and a further search was made with the object of discovering whether there was or not a storehouse for smuggled goods, which was successful. Behind some growing shrubs an opening was discovered which admitted us into a cave of no great size, and almost filled with contraband articles, chiefly tobacco. We expected to find Loret here, but were disappointed; and we are now pretty certain that he took advantage of the priest's imprisonment to get on board the smuggler, the crew of which he in all probability persuaded that their hiding-place had been discovered, and he has thus made his escape. 'A statement of the whole case was drawn up,' added Langenis, and sent with the confession of Agnes Desnoyers to the home minister, and in the shortest possible time an order was transmitted for your release in the manner which should most clearly prove the recognition by the government of your innocence; and also that as much of the property which had been left by M. and Madame Evrart as could be recovered, should be restored to you with the least possible delay.' The governor invited me to dine with him, and to stay in his house a few days; but I had such an intense desire to find myself free, in the open fields, that I refused to remain an instant longer than was necessary to get decent clothes to cover me, from a shop in the town. When I had put on the clothes which the tailor brought me, I went to the glass, and I am almost ashamed to acknowledge that I trembled and hesitated before regarding myself therein. At last I had the courage to do it, and what did I see? Instead of the clear, brilliant complexion, and rosy cheeks I had seen when I last saw myself in a glass, I was looking at a gray-haired man, with a pale face, covered with innumerable little wrinkles. My heart swelled, but I turned for consolation where in my long imprisonment I have been accustomed to seek it, and found it. I accepted from Langenis a sum of money on account of what was due to me, shook hands with him and the governor, and amidst audible expressions of sympathy from all present, with brimming eyes and a sad heart, I stepped into the street, free to go where I pleased. I walked straight along till I reached the open country, where I sat down under a tree growing beside a brook, and with a piece of bread I broke from a loaf I had bought coming along, and the water flowing below me, I made a meal which tasted sweeter than any I had eaten in my life before. I spent the night in thought beneath that tree, looking with wonder and admiration at the stars which had been hidden from my view for so many weary years. WALKING-STICKS. THE use of a staff as a support whilst walking appears as if it did not require any illustration, because it looks so natural and fitting; but still, there is a considerable amount of historical interest in connection with this subject. The staff as employed for the support of old age is of great antiquity. It was well known during the heroic period, since it was referred to in the enigma put forth by the Sphinx, and solved by Edipus. 'There is a being,' said the questioner, 'which has four feet, and it has also three feet, with only one voice; but its feet vary; and when it has the most, it is the weakest.' 'This is man,' was the hero's answer, who, when he is an infant, crawls upon his hands and knees; when he is a man, he walks uprightly; and when he is old, he totters with a stick.' The Bourdon, or pilgrim's staff of the middle ages, |