inside, one coming quickly forward before the rest. It was the Governor,
the Marquis de Vaudreuil. He spoke, but what he said I knew not, for the
stark upturned face of Juste Duvarney was there before me, there was a
great buzzing in my ears, and I fell back into darkness.

IV. THE RAT IN THE TRAP

When I waked I was alone. At first nothing was clear to me; my brain was
dancing in my head, my sight was obscured, my body painful, my senses
were blunted. I was in darkness, yet through an open door there showed a
light, which, from the smell and flickering, I knew to be a torch. This,
creeping into my senses, helped me to remember that the last thing I
saw in the Intendant's courtyard was a burning torch, which suddenly
multiplied to dancing hundreds and then went out. I now stretched forth
a hand, and it touched a stone wall; I moved, and felt straw under me.
Then I fixed my eyes steadily on the open door and the shaking light,
and presently it all came to me: the events of the night, and that I
was now in a cell of the citadel. Stirring, I found that the wound in
my body had been bound and cared for. A loosely tied scarf round my arm
showed that some one had lately left me, and would return to finish the
bandaging. I raised myself with difficulty, and saw a basin of water,
a sponge, bits of cloth, and a pocket-knife. Stupid and dazed though I
was, the instinct of self-preservation lived, and I picked up the knife
and hid it in my coat. I did it, I believe, mechanically, for a hundred
things were going through my mind at the time.

All at once there rushed in on me the thought of Juste Duvarney as I saw
him last--how long ago was it?--his white face turned to the sky, his
arms stretched out, his body dabbled in blood. I groaned aloud. Fool,
fool! to be trapped by these lying French! To be tricked into playing
their shameless games for them, to have a broken body, to have killed
the brother of the mistress of my heart, and so cut myself off from her
and ruined my life for nothing--for worse than nothing! I had swaggered,
boasted, had taken a challenge for a bout and a quarrel like any
hanger-on of a tavern.

Suddenly I heard footsteps and voices outside; then one voice, louder
than the other, saying, "He hasn't stirred a peg--lies like a log!" It
was Gabord.

Doltaire's voice replied, "You will not need a surgeon--no?" His tone,
as it seemed to me, was less careless than usual.

Gabord answered, "I know the