e, they hid cleverly. I never saw a finger-tip
of them till they sprang upon us by the corner here, when we were almost
home."

M. Etienne bent over and turned face up the man whom Monsieur had run
through the heart. He was an ugly enough fellow, one eye entirely closed
by a great scar that ran from his forehead nearly to his grizzled
mustache.

"This is Bernet le Borgne," he said. "Have you encountered him before,
Monsieur? He was a soldier under Guise once, they say, but he has done
naught but hang about Paris taverns this many a year. We used to wonder
how he lived; we knew he did somebody's dirty work. Clisson employed
him once, so I know something of him. With his one eye he could fence
better than most folks with two. My congratulations to you, Monsieur."

But Monsieur, not heeding, was bending over the other man.

"Your acquaintance is wider than mine. Do you know this one?"

M. Etienne shook his head over this other man, who lay face up, staring
with wide dark eyes into the sky. His hair curled in little rings about
his forehead, and his cheeks were smooth; he looked no older than I.

"He dashed at me the first of all," Monsieur said in a low voice. "I ran
him through before the others came up. Mordieu! I am glad it was dark. A
boy like that!"

"He had good mettle to run up first," M. Etienne said. "And it is no
disgrace to fall to your sword, Monsieur. Come, let us go."

But Monsieur looked back again at the dead lad, and then at his son and
at me, and came with us heavy of countenance.

On the stones before us lay a trail of blood-drops.

"Now, that is where Huguet ran with his wounded arm," I said to M.
Etienne.

"Aye, and if we did not know the way home we could find it by this red
track."

But the trail did not reach the door; for when we turned into the little
street where the arch is, where I had waited for Martin, as we turned
the familiar corner under the walls of the house itself, we came
suddenly on the body of a man. Monsieur ran forward with a cry, for it
was the squire Huguet.

He wore a leather jerkin lined with steel rings, mail as stout as any
forged. Some one had stabbed once and again at the coat without avail,
and had then torn it open and stabbed his defenceless breast. Though we
had killed two of their men, they had rained blows enough on this man of
ours to kill twenty.

Monsieur knelt on the ground beside him, but he was quite cold.

"The man who fled when we charged th