companions the most taken with the story of the girl Lucie. His feelings were stirred by it, and he sensed a bond forming between himself and that girl who had vanished thirty years before, whose name he had never heard until then. He did not share his companions' food and merriment, but kept thinking about the girl's disappearance, stroking with his hand the back of a big gray cat which, drawn by the smell of the food, had begun circling the table, then settled on the Viscount's knee, gazing up at him with its eyes and begging for more caresses.

Rabastens rose from the table before his companions and walked away toward the end of the terrace, and his feet led him to that memorial plaque, which he read once more:

"Lucie de Bracontal"

"June 25, 1715"

Why did his heart flutter at the sight of that name? He drew near the brink of the valley and cast a glance down the mountainside, and it seemed to him that the girl was still there, that those who had searched for her had not searched well, and that he would yet see a scrap of her blue silk gown, or a lock of her fair hair, caught on the bramble thorns!

Rain began to fall, and the Viscount retraced his steps to where his companions were joking and trading anecdotes and pleasantries.

One of them proposed that they all play hide-and-seek until the rain stopped and the clouds cleared away. The young men applauded the idea, and the game began. The players divided into two sides: one side to hide in the halls, the corridors, and the underground passages, and one side to hunt for the hidden until it found them. The Viscount de Rabastens was on the first side.

The players scattered, each to his own quarter, and Rabastens made off into the interior of

the château, seeing in this an opportunity offered him to roam

through the places in which Lucie de Bracontal had once disappeared!

He reached a dark corner in one of the corridors, and heard behind him the footsteps of one of the players searching for him. Wanting to slip away from him, he pressed himself against the wall as closely as he could and leaned

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