ell, worthy Nimrod, this gray powder?"

"Truly, I am very much ashamed!" said Angela, hanging her head and
lowering her eyes, and at the same time making a charming little
grimace.

"Imagine, then," said the buccaneer, "that I gave my servant just a
little pinch of powder in a glass of brandy."

"Well?" said Croustillac, with interest.

"Well, for two days he was so gay that he laughed from night till
morning and morning till night."

"I do not see anything bad in that," said Croustillac.

"But wait!" continued the hunter. "My servant did not do this from
amusement, he suffered the torments of the damned; his eyes were
bursting from their sockets, and he said, between his paroxysms of
laughter, that such torture as he endured was beyond belief. The third
day he suffered so that he fell as if in a fit, and remained thus a long
time; all due to the pinch of madame's gray powder. It may not surprise
you to learn that madame's second husband was as gay as a lark, and that
he died very joyfully."

"Oh! heavens, as if one could not commit a little mischief without being
reproached by you," said Angela, like a capricious child.

"Listen, comrade! she calls that a little mischief," said the hunter.
"Just imagine! her second husband laughed so hard that the blood burst
from his nose, eyes and ears. But whatever he laughed about, he did so
as if he had seen the most amusing thing in the world. But that did not
prevent him from saying, like my servant, that he would rather have been
burned at a slow fire than suffer such gayety; he also died, laughing to
the last, and swearing like a devil."

"There! you go too fast," said Blue Beard, shrugging her shoulders.
Then, whispering to the Gascon, "Friend, do not be afraid--I have lost
the secret of the gray powder!"

The chevalier, in an attempt to smile, made quite a grimace. He had left
France at a time when the fearful practice in poisons was at its height,
and people talked only of the heir's powder, the powder of the aged, and
the widow's powder. The names, even, of certain poisons were cited with
fear. Now Blue Beard's laughing powder could not but give rise to the
most doleful reflections on the part of the chevalier. "So," he said to
himself, glancing defiantly at Angela, "does this creature deal in
chemistry and draughts--is this story true?"

"What ails you, brother?" said the buccaneer, struck by Croustillac's
silence.

"You have made him afraid of me," said th