LOUIS DUVAL.

shrubs had been hacked and hewed in wanton sport,
its beds and paths and grass plots could not, in that
dim light at least, be distinguished from each other;
and the fine statues which had once ornamented its
terraces, were all overturned and broken. Through
all this desolation Louis passed on, then crossed other
wasted fields until he reached the edge of the forest,
which, after a minute's thought, he entered.
 In that same part of the forest, and at that same
hour, were two wretched fugitives, starving, and look-
ing only to death as a release from their sufferings.
These two persons were the Count and Countess St.
Clair. Through the whole war, the Count had been
fighting for what he thought the right, but without suc-
cess, and he had returned to his Chateau just in time
to escape with his lady, and to save her from falling
into the hands of their enemies. Their servants had
already fled, and the poor old priest had weeks before
been seized in an attempt to escape, and was cruelly
put to death. An hour after the Count and Madame
had left the Chateau, it was surrounded by a troop of
soldiers, who having searched it in vain, commenced
plundering it, and then set it on fire. But the
fugitives were safe-hidden in a curious cave in the
forest, the secret of which the Count thought was
known only to himself. But what availed it to them
that they were safe from enemies, secure in their secret
hiding-place, if they were at last to perish by famine ?
It was now a week since they had fled, and the small
store of provisions they conveyed with them was all
gone. There was no hope of obtaining more food, nor
of escape. They seemed to be shut up in a tomb, and
they had given themselves over to despair, as they
warmed their shivering hands over a charcoal fire,
which cast a dull light within the hiding-place, but