e exclaimed, waving the lanthorn to and fro boastfully,
that I might see its points. 'What do you say to that? Is that an
undersized pony?'

'No,' I answered, purposely stinting my praise. 'It is pretty fair--for
this country.'

'Or any country,' he answered wrathfully. 'Or any country, I say--I
don't care where it is! And I have reason to know! Why, man, that horse
is--But there, that is a good horse, if ever you saw one!' And with
that he ended--abruptly and lamely; lowered the lanthorn with a sudden
gesture, and turned to the door. He was on the instant in such hurry to
leave that he almost shouldered me out.

But I understood. I knew that he had neatly betrayed all--that he had
been on the point of blurting out that that was M. de Cocheforet's
horse! M. Cocheforet's COMPRENEZ BIEN! And while I turned away my face
in the darkness that he might not see me smile, I was not surprised
to find the man in a moment changed, and become, in the closing of the
door, as sober and suspicious as before, ashamed of himself and enraged
with me, and in a mood to cut my throat for a trifle.

It was not my cue to quarrel, however. I made therefore, as if I
had seen nothing, and when we were back in the inn praised the horse
grudgingly, and like a man but half convinced. The ugly looks and ugly
weapons I saw round me were fine incentives to caution; and no Italian,
I flatter myself, could have played his part more nicely than I did. But
I was heartily glad when it was over, and I found myself, at last, left
alone for the night in a little garret--a mere fowl-house--upstairs,
formed by the roof and gable walls, and hung with strings of apples and
chestnuts. It was a poor sleeping-place--rough, chilly, and unclean. I
ascended to it by a ladder; my cloak and a little fern formed my only
bed. But I was glad to accept it, for it enabled me to be alone and to
think out the position unwatched.

Of course M. de Cocheforet was at the Chateau. He had left his horse
here, and gone up on foot; probably that was his usual plan. He was
therefore within my reach, in one sense--I could not have come at a
better time--but in another he was as much beyond it as if I were still
in Paris. For so far was I from being able to seize him that I dared not
ask a question, or let fall a rash word, or even look about me freely.
I saw I dared not. The slightest hint of my mission, the faintest breath
of distrust, would lead to throat-cutting--and the throat w