the window
last night. Did you not?"

"Aye, monsieur. The thunder woke me, and when I looked out I saw you
plain as day. But Maitre Jacques said it was a vision."

"I flattered myself I saw you first and got that shutter closed very
neatly," said Yeux-gris. "Dame! I am not so clever as I thought. So old
Jacques called us ghosts, did he?"

"Yes, monsieur. He told me this house belonged to M. de Bethune, who was
a Huguenot and killed in the massacre."

Yeux-gris burst into joyous laughter.

"He said my house belonged to the Bethunes! Well played, Jacques! You
owe that gallant lie to me, Gervais, and the pains I took to make him
think us Navarre's men. He is heart and soul for Henri Quatre. Did he
say, perchance, that in this very courtyard Coligny fell?"

"No," said I, seeing that I had been fooled and had had all my terrors
for naught, and feeling much chagrined thereat. "How was I to know it
was a lie? I know naught about Paris. I came up but yesterday from St.
Quentin."

"St. Quentin!" came a cry from the henchman. With a fierce "Be quiet,
fool!" Gervais turned to me and demanded my name.

"Felix Broux."

"Who sent you here?"

"Monsieur, no one."

"You lie."

Again he gripped me by the shoulder, gripped till the tears stood in my
eyes.

"No one, monsieur; I swear it."

"You will not speak! I'll make you, by Heaven."

He seized my thumb and wrist to bend one back on the other, torture with
strength such as his. Yeux-gris sprang off the table.

"Let alone, Gervais! The boy's honest."

"He is a spy."

"He is a fool of a country boy. A spy in hobnailed shoes, forsooth! No
spy ever behaved as he has. I said when you first seized him he was no
spy. I say it again, now I have heard his story. He saw us by chance,
and Maitre Jacques's bogy story spurred him on instead of keeping him
off. You are a fool, my cousin."

"Pardieu! it is you who are the fool," growled Gervais. "You will bring
us to the rope with your cursed easy ways. If he is a spy it means the
whole crew are down upon us."

"What of that?"

"Pardieu! is it nothing?"

Yeux-gris returned with a touch of haughtiness:

"It is nothing. A gentleman may live in his own house."

Gervais looked as if he remembered something. He said much less
boisterously:

"And do you want Monsieur here?"

Yeux-gris flushed red.

"No," he cried. "But you may be easy. He will not trouble himself to
come."

Gervais regarded him silently an instant, a