ieu!
But he was a fighter, that Monsieur de Garnache, and he deserved a
better end than drowning."

"You are quite sure that he is drowned?"

Fortunio replied by giving his reasons for that conclusion, and they
convinced both the Marquise and her son indeed they had never deemed
it possible that the Parisian could have survived that awful leap. The
Dowager looked at Marius, and from him to the captain.

"Do you think, you two, that you will be fit for tomorrow's business?"

"For myself," laughed Fortunio, "I am ready for it now."

"And I shall be when I have rested," answered Marius grimly.

"Then get you both to rest, you will be needing it," she bade them.

"And I, too, madame," said the Seneschal, bending over the hand she held
out to him. "Good-night to you all." He would have added a word to wish
them luck in the morrow's venture; but for the life of him he dared not.
He turned, made another of his bows, and rolled out of the room.

Five minutes later the drawbridge was being raised after his departure,
and Fortunio was issuing orders to the men he had recalled from their
futile search to go clear the guard-room and antechamber of the Northern
Tower, and to bear the dead to the chapel, which must serve as a
mortuary for the time. That done he went off to bed, and soon after the
lights were extinguished in Condillac; and save for Arsenio, who was, on
guard, sorely perturbed by all that had befallen and marvelling at the
rashness of his friend "Battista"--for he had no full particulars of the
business--the place was wrapped in sleep.

Had they been less sure that Garnache was drowned, maybe they had
slumbered less tranquilly that night at Condillac. Fortunio had been
shrewd in his conclusions, yet a trifle hasty; for whilst, as a matter
of fact, he was correct in assuming that the Parisian had not
crawled out of the moat--neither at the point he had searched, nor
elsewhere--yet was he utterly wrong to assume him at the bottom of it.

Garnache had gone through that window prepared to leap into
another--and, he hoped, a better world. He had spun round twice in the
air and shot feet foremost through the chill waters of the moat, and
down until his toes came in contact with a less yielding substance, yet
yielding nevertheless. Marvelling that he should have retained until now
his senses, he realized betimes that he was touching mud--that he was
really ankle deep in it. A vigorous, frantic kick with both legs at