was the real culprit, should be the only one to
suffer the penalty of the law. If he would not do that, why, then, he
must stand the consequences himself--and the consequences would be the
hangman. But in either case he was coming to Toulouse in the morning.

It goes without saying that he was reasonable. I never for a moment held
his judgment in doubt; there is no loyalty about a cut-throat, and it is
not the way of his calling to take unnecessary risk.

We had just settled the matter in a mutually agreeable manner when the
door opened again, and his confederate--rendered uneasy, no doubt,
by his long absence--came to see what could be occasioning this
unconscionable delay in the slitting of the throats of a pair of
sleeping men.

Beholding us there in friendly conclave, and no doubt considering
that under the circumstances his intrusion was nothing short of an
impertinence, that polite gentleman uttered a cry--which I should like
to think was an apology for having disturbed us and turned to go with
most indecorous precipitancy.

But Gilles took him by the nape of his dirty neck and haled him back
into the room. In less time than it takes me to tell of it, he lay
beside his colleague, and was being asked whether he did not think that
he might also come to take the same view of the situation. Overjoyed
that we intended no worse by him, he swore by every saint in the
calendar that he would do our will, that he had reluctantly undertaken
the Chevalier's business, that he was no cut-throat, but a poor man with
a wife and children to provide for.

And that, in short, was how it came to pass that the Chevalier de
Saint-Eustache himself, by disposing for my destruction, disposed
only for his own. With these two witnesses, and Rodenard to swear how
Saint-Eustache had bribed them to cut my throat, with myself and Gilles
to swear how the attempt had been made and frustrated, I could now go
to His Majesty with a very full confidence, not only of having the
Chevalier's accusations, against whomsoever they might be, discredited,
but also of sending the Chevalier himself to the gallows he had so
richly earned.

CHAPTER XXI. LOUIS THE JUST

"For me," said the King, "these depositions were not necessary. Your
word, my dear Marcel, would have sufficed. For the courts, however,
perhaps it is well that you have had them taken; moreover, they form
a valuable corroboration of the treason which you lay to the charge of
Mons