retched.

But though my joy was great and my surprise profound, greater still was
the bewilderment that in Mironsac's face I saw depicted.

"Monsieur de Bardelys!" he exclaimed, and a hundred questions were
contained in his astonished eyes.

"Po' Cap de Dieu!" growled his cousin, "I was well advised, it seems, to
have brought you."

"But," Mironsac asked his cousin, as he took my hands in his own, "why
did you not tell me, Amedee, that it was to Monsieur le Marquis de
Bardelys that you were conducting me?"

"Would you have had me spoil so pleasant a surprise?" his cousin
demanded.

"Armand," said I, "never was a man more welcome than are you. You are
but come in time to save my life."

And then, in answer to his questions, I told him briefly of all that had
befallen me since that night in Paris when the wager had been laid, and
of how, through the cunning silence of Chatellerault, I was now upon the
very threshold of the scaffold. His wrath burst forth at that, and
what he said of the Count did me good to hear. At last I stemmed his
invective.

"Let that be for the present, Mironsac," I laughed. "You are here, and
you can thwart all Chatellerault's designs by witnessing to my identity
before the Keeper of the Seals."

And then of a sudden a doubt closed like a cold hand upon my brain. I
turned to Castelroux.

"Mon Dieu!" I cried. "What if they were to deny me a fresh trial?"

"Deny it you!" he laughed. "They will not be asked to grant you one."

"There will be no need," added Mironsac. "I have but to tell the King--"

"But, my friend," I exclaimed impatiently, "I am to die in the morning!"

"And the King shall be told to-day--now, at once. I will go to him."

I stared askance a moment; then the thought of the uproar that I had
heard recurring to me, "Has the King arrived already?" I exclaimed.

"Naturally, monsieur. How else do I come to be here? I am in His
Majesty's train."

At that I grew again impatient. I thought of Roxalanne and of how she
must be suffering, and I bethought me that every moment Mironsac now
remained in my cell was another moment of torture for that poor child.
So I urged him to be gone at once and carry news of my confinement to
His Majesty. He obeyed me, and I was left alone once more, to pace up
and down in my narrow cell, a prey to an excitement such as I should
have thought I had outlived.

At the end of a half-hour Castelroux returned alone.

"Well?" I cried the moment