"Are you going soon? Will you take me?"
"Not just yet, my boy. You are hardly fit for the journey. A chill might lay you by again; besides, other people might catch the small-pox from you. So I have settled to leave you here a little longer, in charge of kind Mademoiselle de St. Roques. She and Monsieur and Madame de Bertrand will see well after you."
Roy looked very doleful.
"When are you going?"
"I am afraid—to-morrow. But for that I would not have told you quite so soon. But you will keep up a brave heart. You are a soldier's son, you know, so you mustn't give in."
Roy's face worked.
"I don't want you to go," he said. "That horrid old beast of a Napoleon; I wish somebody or other would guillotine him—that I do! He deserves it richly! Must you go?"
"I'm afraid I have no choice. The gendarmes have been looking me up; and if I put off any longer I shall get into trouble with those gentlemen. I'm bound to report myself at Fontainebleau before the evening of the day after to-morrow. But you will soon come after me. Why—Roy!"
"I can't help it. It's so horrid," sobbed Roy, direfully ashamed of himself. "I—don't like you to go. I don't like you and papa to be prisoners. And oh—poor little Molly! What will she do! Den, why does God let such wicked men be in the world? I wouldn't. I'd kill them right off."
"One can't always see the reason. Some good reason there must be."