, his
cloak dusty with the wriggling he had done under the benches. He was
different also. He had been a furious Leaguer. He had shouted for Guise.
He had come up the stairs to seek for weapons wherewith to fight for
that Sole Pillar of Holy Church.

"Well?" said Guy Launay, looking sideways at him.

"Well, what?" growled the Abbe John, most unclerically. He had indeed no
right to the title, save that his uncle was a cardinal, and he looked to
be one himself some day--that is, if the influence of his family held.
But in these times credit was such a brittle article.

"Did you get the weapons?" snapped his friend--"the pistol, the
sword-cane? You have been long enough about it. I have worn my pencil to
a stub!"

The Abbe John had intended to lie. But somehow, when he thought of the
clear dark eyes wet with tears, and the dead Huguenot, within
there--somehow he could not.

Instead he blurted out the truth.

"I forgot all about them!" he said.

The son of the ex-provost of the merchants looked at him once,
furiously.

"I think you are mad!" he said.

"So do I!" said the Abbe John, nodding blandly.

"Well, what is the reason of it?" grumbled the other. "What has Old
Blessings-of-Peace got in there--a hidden treasure or a pretty wench? By
the milk-pails o' Mary, I will go and see for myself!"

"Stop," said the Abbe John, with sudden heat, "no more spying! I am sick
of it. Let us go and get weapons at the Hotel of the Duke of Guise, if
you like--but respect the privacy of our master--our good and kind
master!"

Guy Launay eyed his companion a moment murkily.

He gritted his teeth viciously, as if he could gladly have bitten a
piece out of his arm. He showed large flat teeth when angry, for all the
world like a bad-tempered horse.

"Stop and take notes on the comforts of philosophy by yourself," he
said; "I am off to do my duty like a man. You have turned soft at the
moment of action, like all Spaniards--all the breed are alike, you and
your master, the Demon of the South!"

"You lie!"

"And you! But wait till to-morrow!"

"Ah," cried the Abbe John, "like all Frenchmen, you would put off a
fight till to-morrow. Come out now, and I will break your head with a
quarter-staff!"

"Pshaw!" quoth Guy Launay, "quarter-staffs indeed, on the Day of
Barricades. I am off to kill a King's man, or to help spit a Huguenot!"

And the next moment the Professor of Eloquence had but one auditor.

CHAPTER III.