Upon this assurance the youths returned. The father presented them to the Baroness and myself: after which he withdrew with our domestics, while at the request of the two waiting-women, Marguerite conducted them to the room designed for their mistress.

The two newcomers were tall, stout, well-made young men, hard-featured, and very much sunburnt. They paid their compliments to us in few words, and acknowledged Claude, who now entered the room, as an old acquaintance. They then threw aside their cloaks in which they were wrapped up, took off a leathern belt to which a large cutlass was suspended, and each drawing a brace of pistols from his girdle laid them upon a shelf.