your arms."

"But if you assented to his wish," Basterga retorted, eyeing him keenly,
"why did he depart after that fashion?"

"Something happened to him," Louis said. "I do not know what. He seemed
to be in distress, or to be ill."

"I could see that," the scholar answered dryly. "But Master Claude? What
of him? And why was he so enamoured of you that he could not be parted
from you?"

"It was to punish me for listening. They followed me different ways."

"I see. And that is the truth, is it?"

"I swear it is!"

The scholar saw no reason why it should not be the truth. Louis, a
facile tool, had always been of his, the stronger, party. If Blondel
tampered with any one, he would naturally, if he knew aught of the
house, suborn Claude or Anne. And Louis, spying and fleeing, and when
overtaken, promising silence, was quite in the picture. The only thing,
indeed, which stood out awkwardly, and refused to fall into place, was
the fashion in which the Syndic had turned and gone off the bridge. And
for that there might be reasons. He might have been seized with a sudden
attack of his illness, or he might have perceived Basterga watching him
from the farther bank.

On the whole, the scholar, forgetting that cowards are ever liars, saw
no reason to doubt Louis' story. It did but add one more to the motives
he had for action: immediate, decisive, striking action, if he would
save his neck, if he would succeed in his plans. That the Syndic alone
stood between him and arrest, that by the Syndic alone he lived, he had
learned at a meeting at which he had been present the previous night at
the Grand Duke's country house four leagues distant. D'Albigny had been
there, and Brunaulieu, Captain of the Grand Duke's Guards, and Father
Alexander, who dreamed of the Episcopate of Geneva, and others--the
chiefs of the plot, his patrons. To his mortification they had been able
to tell him things he had not learned, though he was within the city,
and they without. Among others, that the Council had certain knowledge
of him and his plans, and but for the urgency of Blondel would have
arrested him a fortnight before.

His companions at the midnight supper had detected his dismay, and had
derided him, thinking that with that there was an end of the mysterious
scheme which he had refused to impart. They fancied that he would not
return to the city, or venture his head a second time within the lion's
jaws. But they reckoned without their