missed on the day of her wedding celebration and of whom they had found no trace. Yes, she was Lucie, who had entered this hiding place thirty years before, as he had entered it that day, and had not been able to leave it.

And this secret hiding place was also that refuge in which the Baron des Adrets used to conceal himself whenever his enemies tightened the noose about him.

Yes, here he used to hide, that noble brigand who spread terror through the land; and here Lucie had hidden and died; and here Rabastens had hidden... would he meet his end as she had?

The day passed and night drew near... He was a prisoner within these walls, together with the girl who had been buried alive. He had been here twenty-four hours; was there any way out of the tomb?

While he was pondering his plight, his eye was caught by two points gleaming in the darkness, through a small opening high in the wall.

The two points drew nearer... They were the eyes of the cat... the caretaker's cat... the one that had sat on Rabastens's knee and taken pleasure in his caresses.

This cat could be his messenger to the outside — to his companions, who were doubtless searching for him...

The young man resolved to seize the opportunity, and not to let this means of deliverance slip from his hand.

He drew his handkerchief from his pocket... approached slowly and warily the cat, which had come down into the chamber... pounced upon it and gripped its neck with his hands... and despite what he suffered from its claws, he managed to tie the handkerchief to its leg and wind its two ends over its back... Then he released it, and it leapt out through the opening in terror.

And Rabastens stood upon the arm of the chair and sent through the opening cries for help, with all the strength of his throat, redoubled by fear and dread — until he fell to the floor of the chamber in a faint!

*

The companions of the Viscount de Rabastens grew anxious, and refused to leave the château of Montségur before they had found their friend. They had gone on searching for him from the moment they became aware of his disappearance.

And the cat was the lost young man's messenger to his friends. They saw Rabastens's handkerchief wound over its back and tied to its leg, and they began to watch its comings and goings, until they saw it enter by the little opening. From it they learned their companion's hiding place, and they tried to reach him through the secret doors; but they failed, and only one course remained to them, which they took: to break down the wall around the opening and descend

into the hidden chamber by a wooden ladder.

This they did, and they found their companion in a faint beside the body of Lucie de Bracontal.

When the Marquise de Bracontal learned what had happened, she hastened to the château of Montségur, and found in herself courage enough to enter the chamber in which her daughter had been buried alive. But the walls had to be torn down, for opening the two secret doors remained impossible. And when the walls were demolished, there were found within them infernal contrivances made up of chains, weights, and balls, which the Baron des Adrets had devised so that he might enter his hiding place and leave it whenever he pleased.

And the Marquise de Bracontal turned the Baron's hiding place, her daughter's sepulcher, into a little chapel for prayer!

In that little chapel — whose walls remain to this day bare and stripped of all ornament and dec-oration, as they were in the days of the noble brigand who made it a refuge for himself and a refuge for his treasures, and whose secret door has been preserved as it was in the time long past — in that chapel, in whose floor the body of the poor girl Lucie was buried, prayers are now offered for the repose of her soul; and as incense rises through its corners, the faint phantoms left in it by the deeds of the Baron des Adrets generations ago are dispelled!