CHAPTER XVII. THE GHOSTS OF THE TEMPLARS 



'Tis said, as through the aisles they passed, They heard strange voices on the blast, And through the cloister galleries small, Which at mid-height thread the chancel wall, Loud sobs and laughter louder ran, And voices unlike the voice of man, As if the fiends kept holiday. Scott, LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL 

'Ill news, Martin, I see by your look!' cried Eustacie, starting to her feet from the heap of straw on which she was sitting in his cowhouse, one early April day, about seven weeks since her evasion from the convent. 

'Not so, I hope, Madame, but I do not feel at ease. Monsieur has not sent for me, nor told me his plans for the morrow, and I much doubt me whether that bode not a search here. Now I see a plan, provided Madame would trust herself to a Huguenot.' 

'They would guard me for my husband's sake.' 

'And could Madame walk half a league, as far as the Grange du Temple? There live Matthieu Rotrou and his wife, who have, they say, baffled a hundred times the gendarmes who sought their ministers. No one ever found a pastor, they say, when Rotrou had been of the congregation; and if they can do so much for an old preacher with a long tongue, surely they can for a sweet young lady; and if they could shelter her just for tomorrow, till the suspicion is over, then would I come for Madame with my cart, and carry her into Chollet among the trusses of hay, as we had fixed.' 
Of who?
THE TEMPLARS 