lishman too!--He ought to have known Reuben's
nag was not fit to drive."

"But if he had no choice?"

"No choice, your Excellency?" protested the Jew, in a rasping voice,
"did I not repeat to him a dozen times, that my horse and cart would
take him quicker, and more comfortably than Reuben's bag of bones. He
would not listen. Reuben is such a liar, and has such insinuating ways.
The stranger was deceived. If he was in a hurry, he would have had
better value for his money by taking my cart."

"You have a horse and cart too, then?" asked Chauvelin, peremptorily.

"Aye! that I have, your Excellency, and if your Excellency wants to
drive . . ."

"Do you happen to know which way my friend went in Reuben Goldstein's
cart?"

Thoughtfully the Jew rubbed his dirty chin. Marguerite's heart was
beating well-nigh to bursting. She had heard the peremptory question;
she looked anxiously at the Jew, but could not read his face beneath the
shadow of his broad-brimmed hat. Vaguely she felt somehow as if he held
Percy's fate in his long dirty hands.

There was a long pause, whilst Chauvelin frowned impatiently at the
stooping figure before him: at last the Jew slowly put his hand in his
breast pocket, and drew out from its capacious depths a number of silver
coins. He gazed at them thoughtfully, then remarked, in a quiet tone of
voice,--

"This is what the tall stranger gave me, when he drove away with Reuben,
for holding my tongue about him, and his doings."

Chauvelin shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

"How much is there there?" he asked.

"Twenty francs, your Excellency," replied the Jew, "and I have been an
honest man all my life."

Chauvelin without further comment took a few pieces of gold out of his
own pocket, and leaving them in the palm of his hand, he allowed them to
jingle as he held them out towards the Jew.

"How many gold pieces are there in the palm of my hand?" he asked
quietly.

Evidently he had no desire to terrorize the man, but to conciliate him,
for his own purposes, for his manner was pleasant and suave. No doubt
he feared that threats of the guillotine, and various other persuasive
methods of that type, might addle the old man's brains, and that he
would be more likely to be useful through greed of gain, than through
terror of death.

The eyes of the Jew shot a quick, keen glance at the gold in his
interlocutor's hand.

"At least five, I should say, your Excellency," he replied obsequiously