nose, was excellent company after a bottle or two; he
told us some excellent stories, and at every word of his the other two
burst out laughing. I remained gloomy and silent. "Come, young fellow!"
he said with a smile, "forget for a little the death of your respectable
grandmother. Take a drop, and put your troublesome thoughts to flight."

Others joined in the conversation, and the time passed in the midst of
tobacco smoke, the clinking of glasses, and the ringing of mugs. But
at nine o'clock, after the watchman's visit, the expression of things
changed. Madoc rose and said: "Well, my friends, let us proceed to
business. Fasten the doors and shutters quietly! You, ladies, may go
to bed!" His two tattered followers looked more like robbers themselves
than like props of law and order. Each drew a club with a knob of lead
attached to one end, from his trousers' leg, and Madoc tapped his breast
pocket to make sure that his pistol was there. This done, he bid me lead
them to the loft. We climbed the stairs. Having reached the little room,
where thoughtful little Annette had taken care to light a fire, Madoc,
cursing between his teeth, hastened to throw water on the coals; then
motioning to the pile of straw, he said to me: "You may go to sleep if
you like."

He sat down, together with his two acolytes, at the end of the room
close to the wall, and they put out the light. I lay down on the straw,
breathing a prayer to the Almighty to send hither the assassin. After
midnight the silence became so profound that you would never have
suspected three men were there with wide-open eyes, on the alert for
the slightest sound. The hours wore slowly away. I could not sleep.
A thousand terrible ideas teemed in my brain. One o'clock--two
o'clock--three o'clock struck, and nothing appeared. At three o'clock
one of the officials stirred slightly. I thought the man had come at
last. But again all was still. I began to think that Madoc would take
me for an impostor, and that in the morning things would fare badly with
me; thus, instead of helping my companions, I should only be fettered
with them.

The time seemed to me to pass very rapidly after three o'clock. I wished
the night might last forever, that the only ray of hope might not be
gone. I was starting to go over all these thoughts for the fiftieth
time, when, suddenly, without my having heard a sound, the window opened
and two eyes glistened in the opening. Nothing stirred in the l