or
I know who wrote this letter. I think I may say he is a friend of mine."

"I am sure of it. I have already been told so," said the cobbler. "Have
you a lodging in Konigsberg? No? Then you can lodge in my house."

Without awaiting a reply, which he seemed to consider a foregone
conclusion, he limped down the Kohl Markt towards the steps leading to
the river, which in winter is a thoroughfare.

"I live in the Neuer Markt," he said breathlessly, as he laboured
onwards. "I have waited for you three days on that bridge. Where have
you been all this time?"

"Avoiding the French," replied D'Arragon curtly. Respecting his own
affairs he was reticent, as commanders and other lonely men must always
be. They walked side by side on the dusty and trodden ice without
further speech. At the steps from the river to Neuer Markt, D'Arragon
gave the lame man his hand, and glanced a second time at the fingers
which clasped his own. They had not been born to toil, but had had it
thrust upon them.

They crossed the Neuer Markt together, and went into that house where
the linden grows so close as to obscure the windows. And the lodging
offered to Louis was the room in which Charles Darragon had slept in his
wet clothes six months earlier. So small is the world in which we live,
and so narrow are the circles drawn by Fate around human existence and
endeavour.

The cobbler having shown his visitor the room, and pointed out its
advantages, was turning to go when D'Arragon, who was laying aside his
fur coat, seemed to catch his attention, and he paused on the threshold.

"There is French blood in your veins," he said abruptly.

"Yes--a little."

"So. I thought there must be. You reminded me--it was odd, the way you
laid aside your coat--reminded me of a Frenchman who lodged here for
one night. He was like you, too, in build and face. He was a spy, if you
please--one of the French Emperor's secret police. I was new at the work
then, but still I suspected there was something wrong about him. I took
his boots--a pretext of mending them. I locked him in. He got out of
that window, if you please, without his boots. He followed me, and
learnt much that he was not meant to know. I have since heard it from
others. He did the Emperor a great service--that man. He saved his life,
I think, from assassination in Dantzig. And he did me an ill turn--but
it was my own carelessness. I thought to make a thaler by lodging him,
and he was tricking me