lled
their caution to sleep. They shook their heads, and laughed, saying,

"We're forbidden to tell that."

"Yet, if it be so simple as to have no meaning, what harm in telling
it?"

"But orders are orders, and we're soldiers," answered the shrewd short
fellow.

The idea had been working in my brain, growing stronger and stronger
till it reached conviction. I determined now to put it to the proof.

"Tut," said I. "You make a pretty secret of it, and I don't blame you.
But I can guess your riddle. Listen. If anything befell M. de Fontelles,
which God forbid----"

"Amen, amen," they murmured with a chuckle.

"You two, or if fate left but one, that one, would ride on at his best
speed to London, and there seek out the Ambassador of the Most Christian
King. Isn't it so?"

"So much, sir, you might guess from what we've said."

"Ay, ay, I claim no powers of divination. Yet I'll guess a little more.
On being admitted to the presence of the Ambassador, he would relate the
sad fate of his master, and would then deliver his message, and that
message would be----" I drew my chair forward between them and laid a
finger on the arm of each. "That message," said I, "would be just like
this--and indeed it's very simple, and seems devoid of all rational
meaning: _Je viens_." They started. "_Tu viens._" They gaped. "_Il
vient_," I cried triumphantly, and their chairs shot back as they sprang
to their feet, astonishment vivid on their faces. For me, I sat there
laughing in sheer delight at the excellence of my aim and the shrewdness
of my penetration.

What they would have said, I do not know. The door was flung open and M.
de Fontelles appeared. He bowed coldly to me and vented on his servants
the anger from which he was not yet free, calling them drunken knaves
and bidding them see to their horses and lie down in the stable, for he
must be on his way by daybreak. With covert glances at me which implored
silence and received the answer of a reassuring nod, they slunk away. I
bowed to M. de Fontelles with a merry smile; I could not conceal my
amusement and did not care how it might puzzle him. I strode out of the
kitchen and made my way up the stairs. I had to pass the Duke's
apartment. The light still burned there, and he and Carford were sitting
at the table. I put my head in.

"If your Grace has no need of me, I'll seek my bed," said I, mustering a
yawn.

"No need at all," he answered. "Good-night to you, Simon." But th