p and click he sucked in secrets
from our garrison--a spy where had been a soldier, as we thought. You
once wore a sword, Captain Moray--eh?"

"If the Governor would grant me leave, I would not only wear, but use
one, your excellency knows well where," said I.

"Large speaking, Captain Moray. They do that in Virginia, I am told."

"In Gascony there's quiet, your excellency."

Doltaire laughed outright, for it was said that Bigot, in his coltish
days, had a shrewish Gascon wife, whom he took leave to send to heaven
before her time. I saw the Intendant's mouth twitch angrily.

"Come," he said, "you have a tongue; we'll see if you have a stomach.
You've languished with the girls; you shall have your chance to drink
with Francois Bigot. Now, if you dare, when we have drunk to the first
cockcrow, should you be still on your feet, you'll fight some one among
us, first giving ample cause."

"I hope, your excellency," I replied, with a touch of vanity, "I have
still some stomach and a wrist. I will drink to cockcrow, if you will.
And if my sword prove the stronger, what?"

"There's the point," he said. "Your Englishman loves not fighting for
fighting's sake, Doltaire; he must have bonbons for it. Well, see: if
your sword and stomach prove the stronger, you shall go your ways to
where you will. Voila!"

If I could but have seen a bare portion of the craftiness of this pair
of devils artisans! They both had ends to serve in working ill to me,
and neither was content that I should be shut away in the citadel, and
no more. There was a deeper game playing. I give them their due: the
trap was skillful, and in those times, with great things at stake,
strategy took the place of open fighting here and there. For Bigot I was
to be a weapon against another; for Doltaire, against myself.

What a gull they must have thought me! I might have known that, with my
lost papers on the way to France, they must hold me tight here till
I had been tried, nor permit me to escape. But I was sick of doing
nothing, thinking with horror on a long winter in the citadel, and I
caught at the least straw of freedom.

"Captain Moray will like to spend a couple of hours at his lodgings
before he joins us at the palace," the Intendant said, and with a nod
to me he turned to his coachman. The horses wheeled, and in a moment the
great doors opened, and he had passed inside to applause, though here
and there among the crowd was heard a hiss, for the Scar