,' and
he handed me a packet.

'Quite so!' I said, leading his rascally face aright. 'And you kept it
as long as you dared--as long as you thought I should hang, you knave!
Was not that so? But there, do not lie to me. Tell me instead which
of my friends left it.' For, to confess the truth, I had not so many
friends at this time and ten good crowns--the packet contained no less
a sum--argued a pretty staunch friend, and one of whom a man might
reasonably be proud.

The knave sniggered maliciously. 'A crooked dwarfish man left it,' he
said. 'I doubt I might call him a tailor and not be far out.'

'Chut!' I answered--but I was a little out of countenance, nevertheless.
'I understand. An honest fellow enough, and in debt to me! I am glad he
remembered. But when am I to go, friend?'

'In an hour,' he answered sullenly. Doubtless he had looked to get one
of the crowns; but I was too old a hand for that. If I came back I could
buy his services; and if I did not I should have wasted my money.

Nevertheless, a little later, when I found myself on my way to the Hotel
Richelieu under so close a guard that I could see nothing in the street
except the figures that immediately surrounded me, I wished that I had
given him the money. At such times, when all hangs in the balance and
the sky is overcast, the mind runs on luck and old superstitions, and
is prone to think a crown given here may avail there--though THERE be a
hundred leagues away.

The Palais Richelieu was at this time in building, and we were required
to wait in a long, bare gallery, where the masons were at work. I was
kept a full hour here, pondering uncomfortably on the strange whims
and fancies of the great man who then ruled France as the King's
Lieutenant-General, with all the King's powers, and whose life I
had once been the means of saving by a little timely information. On
occasion he had done something to wipe out the debt; and at other times
he had permitted me to be free with him, and so far we were not unknown
to one another.

Nevertheless, when the doors were at last thrown open, and I was led
into his presence, my confidence underwent a shock. His cold glance,
that, roving over me, regarded me not as a man but an item, the steely
glitter of his southern eyes, chilled me to the bone. The room was bare,
the floor without carpet or covering. Some of the woodwork lay about,
unfinished and in pieces. But the man--this man, needed no surroundings.
His ke