"If you prefer, sir," answered Dan, holding the door open for his guest
to go out. Monsieur de Boisdhyver turned and surveyed the Oak Parlour
once more before he left it. "Ah!" he exclaimed, "this so charming
room--it is of a perfection! Dorsetshire, you say? ... To me it would
seem French." They walked back rapidly along the dark cold corridors to
the bar. All the way the Marquis, wrapped tightly in his great cloak,
kept the thumb of his left hand in his waistcoat pocket, pressing
securely against the paper he had taken from the old cabinet in the Oak
Parlour.



CHAPTER III

THE MARQUIS AT NIGHT


The household of the Inn at the Red Oak soon became accustomed to the
presence of their new member; indeed, he seemed to them during those
bleak winter months a most welcome addition. Except for an occasional
traveller who spent a night or a Sunday at the Inn, he was the only
guest. He was gregarious and talkative, and would frequently keep them
for an hour or so at table as he talked to them of his life in France,
and of his adventures in the exciting times through which his country had
passed during the last fifty years. He was the cadet, he told them, of a
noble family of the Vendee, the head of which, though long faithful to
the exiled Bourbons, had gone over to Napoleon upon the establishment of
the Empire. But as for himself--Marie-Anne-Timelon-Armand de
Boisdhyver--he still clung to the Imperial cause, and though now for many
years his age and infirmities had forced him to withdraw from any part in