right."

"This is very generous," I answered calmly. "But I have crimes enough
upon my head, and so, if the worst should befall me, I am simply atoning
in one person for the errors of two."

"But that is no concern of mine!" he cried.

"It is so much your concern that if you commit so egregious a blunder as
to denounce yourself, you will have ruined yourself, without materially
benefitting me."

He still objected, but in this strain I argued for some time, and to
such good purpose that in the end I made him realize that by betraying
himself he would not save me, but only join me on the journey to the
scaffold.

"Besides, gentlemen," I pursued, "my case is far from hopeless. I have
every confidence that, as matters stand, by putting forth my hand at the
right moment, by announcing my identity at the proper season, I can, if
I am so inclined, save my neck from the headsman."

"If you are so inclined?" they both cried, their looks charged with
inquiry.

"Let that be," I answered; "it does not at present concern us. What
I desire you to understand, Monsieur de Lesperon, is that if I go to
Toulouse alone, when the time comes to proclaim myself, and it is found
that I am not Rene de Lesperon, of Lesperon in Gascony, they will assume
that you are dead, and there will be no count against me.

"But if you come with me, and thereby afford proof that you are alive,
my impersonation of you may cause me trouble. They may opine that I have
been an abettor of treason, that I have attempted to circumvent the
ends of justice, and that I may have impersonated you in order to render
possible your escape. For that, you may rest assured, they will punish
me.

"You will see, therefore, that my own safety rests on your passing
quietly out of France and leaving the belief behind you that you are
dead--a belief that will quickly spread once I shall have cast off your
identity. You apprehend me?"

"Vaguely, monsieur; and perhaps you are right. What do you say,
Stanislas?"

"Say?" cried the fiery Marsac. "I am weighed down with shame, my poor
Rene, for having so misjudged you."

More he would have said in the same strain, but Lesperon cut him short
and bade him attend to the issue now before him. They discussed it
at some length, but always under the cloud in which my mysteriousness
enveloped it, and, in the end, encouraged by my renewed assurances that
I could best save myself if Lesperon were not taken with me, the Gascon
cons