lethargy started the fierce instinct of self and the ruthless impulse of
revenge. Not too late yet to escape; for those subtle banes, that are to
defy all detection, work but slowly to their end.

One evening a woman, closely mantled, stood at watch by the angle of a
wall. The light came dim and muffled from the window of a cafe hard at
hand; the reflection slept amidst the shadows on the dark pavement, and
save a solitary lamp swung at distance in the vista over the centre of
the narrow street, no ray broke the gloom. The night was clouded and
starless, the wind moaned in gusts, and the rain fell heavily; but the
gloom and the loneliness did not appall the eye, and the wind did not
chill the heart, and the rain fell unheeded on the head of the woman at
her post. At times she paused in her slow, sentry-like pace to and fro,
to look through the window of the cafe, and her gaze fell always on one
figure seated apart from the rest. At length her pulse beat more quickly,
and the patient lips smiled sternly. The figure had risen to depart. A
man came out and walked quickly up the street; the woman approached, and
when the man was under the single lamp swung aloft, he felt his arm
touched: the woman was at his side, and looking steadily into his face--

"You are Pierre Guillot, the Breton, the friend of George Cadoudal. Will
you be his avenger?"

The Chouan's first impulse had been to place his hand in his vest, and
something shone bright in the lamp-light, clasped in those iron fingers.
The voice and the manner reassured him, and he answered readily,--

"I am he whom you seek, and I only live to avenge."

"Read, then, and act," answered the woman, as she placed a paper in his