, and would have given my right arm if that cursed
lantern had not gone out? I said to him:

"If you open your mouth again, I swear to leave you lying here on the
ground; and you will probably die of that hole I made in you."

His own sensations by that time must have shown him the seriousness of
his wound. He lay still and silent and greenish-gray and sick and
gasping; and I--I could not look at him for very anguish.

It was but half a quarter of an hour before Jacques Haret returned
with a physician and one of those sedan chairs which can be made into
a litter. The physician, an intelligent looking man, examined the rude
bandage I had made for the wounded man, and then silently motioned us
to lay him on the litter, which we did. His lodgings were close by, so
Bellegarde told us--and we bore our gruesome burden through the
street.

Gaston Cheverny's hurt was as much an accident as if it had been a
lightning bolt, but no man ever suffered more than I at the thought
that I had inflicted it. Arrived at his lodging--an excellent one in
the quarter of the Temple--we carried him into his bedchamber, laid
him on his bed, got his valet, and, except the valet, we were all
ordered to leave by the physician. As I turned away from the bed,
Gaston Cheverny managed to hold out his hand to me. I took it, and I
am not ashamed to say that, for the second time that night, tears came
into my eyes. Outside in the street I watched and waited. The night
grew sharp, and the darkness grew dense, and the city's throbbing
pulse grew still. I walked up and down the street, and only the
watchman's distant cry and my own quiet foot-fall, broke the midnight
silence. The inevitable thought came to me, whether, after all, there
be any such thing as chance in the world--or, whether all is chance. I
had paused that afternoon before the grille of an old garden, softly
called to stop by the scent of the lilacs--and because I had ever
loved the scent of lilacs a man might die that night.

No one came out of the house where Gaston Cheverny battled with death.
The lights burned steadily in the saloon which communicated with the
bedchamber where we had carried the wounded man, and the room remained
empty, so I knew Gaston Cheverny still lived. Some time after midnight
the valet came out running. I ran after him to ask how his master
fared.

"Very bad," replied the poor fellow. "I go for another physician
now."

After an hour a coach rumbled up--it w