ght but papers! I swear he
did not."

"Whatever was there, I said! Whatever was there!" the Syndic screamed.

"No, worshipful sir!" amid a storm of sobs. "No, no! Indeed no! And how
was I to know? There was naught but that in the box, and who would think
treason lay in a----"

"Mischief lay in it!"

"In a bottle!"

"And treason," Blondel thundered, drowning his last word, "for aught you
knew! Who are you to judge where treason lies, or may lie? Oh, pig, dog,
fool," he continued, carried away by a fresh paroxysm of rage, at the
thought that he had had it in his grasp and let it go! "If I could score
your back!" And he brandished his cane.

"You have scored his face pretty fairly," Baudichon muttered. "To score
his back too----"

"Were nothing for the offence! Nothing! As you would say if you knew
it," Blondel panted.

"Indeed?"

"Ay."

"Then I would like to know it. What is it he has done?"

"He has left undone that which he was ordered to do," Blondel answered
more soberly than he had yet spoken. He had recovered something of his
power to reason. "That is what he has done. But for his default we
should at this moment be in a position to seize Basterga."

"Ay?"

"Ay, and to seize him with proof of his guilt! Proof and to spare."

"But I could not know," Louis whimpered. "Worshipful gentlemen, I could
not know. I could not know what it was you wanted."

"I told you to bring the contents of the box."

"Letters, ay! Letters, worthy sir, but not----"

"Silence, and go into that room!" Blondel pointed with a shaking finger
to a small inner serving-room at the end of the parlour. "Go!" he
repeated peremptorily, "and stay there until I come to you."

Then, but not until the lad had taken his tear-bedabbled face into the
closet and had closed the door behind him, the Syndic turned to the
three. "I ask your pardon," he said, making no attempt to disguise the
agitation which still moved him. "But it was enough, it was more than
enough, to try me." He paused and wiped his brow, on which the sweat
stood in beads. "He had under his hand the papers," looking at them a
little askance as if he doubted whether the explanation would pass,
"that we need! The papers that would convict Basterga. And because they
did not wear the appearance he expected--because they were disguised,
you understand--they were in a bottle in fact--and were not precisely
what he expected----"

"He left them?"

"He left them." There was