the Kneiphof, where the streets are quiet,
and the Englishman followed him. At the corner of the Kohl Markt he
turned and looked, not at the man, but at his boots.

"You are a sailor?" he said.

"Yes."

"I was told to look for an English sailor--Louis d'Arragon."

"Then you have found me," was the reply.

Still the cobbler hesitated.

"How am I to know it?" he asked suspiciously.

"Can you read?" asked D'Arragon. "I can prove who I am--if I want to.
But I am not sure that I want to."

"Oh! it is only a letter--of no importance. Some private business of
your own. It comes from Dantzig--written by one whose name begins with
'B.'"

"Barlasch," suggested D'Arragon quietly, as he took from his pocket a
paper which he unfolded and held beneath the eyes of the cobbler. It was
a passport written in three languages. If the man could read, he was not
anxious to boast of an accomplishment so far above his station; but
he glanced at the paper, not without a practised skill, to seize the
essential parts of it.

"Yes, that is the name," he said, searching in his pockets. "The letter
is an open one. Here it is."

In passing the letter, the man made a scarcely perceptible movement of
the hand which might have been a signal.

"No," said D'Arragon, "I do not belong to the Tugendbund or to any other
secret society. We have need of no such associations in my country."

The cobbler laughed, not without embarrassment.

"You have a quick eye," he said. "It is a great country, England. I have
seen the river full of English ships before Napoleon chased you off the
seas."

D'Arragon smiled as he unfolded the letter.

"He has not done it yet," he said, with that spirit which enables
mariners of the Anglo-Saxon race to be amused when there is a talk of
supremacy on the high seas. He read the letter carefully, and his face
hardened.

"I was instructed," said the cobbler, "to give you the letter, and at
the same time to inform you that any assistance or facilities you may
require will be forth-coming; besides..." he broke off and pointed with
his thick, leather-stained finger, "that writing is not the writing of
him who signs."

"He who signs cannot write at all."

"That writing," went on the cobbler, "is a passport in any German state.
He who carries a letter written in that hand can live and travel free
anywhere from here to the Rhine or the Danube."

"Then I am lucky in possessing a powerful friend," said D'Arragon, "f