us, and, once roused,
without ruth or mercy.

There was the joint in his harness. Once let his name be published with
Basterga's,--as must happen if the watch were summoned and the girl
spoke out--and no one could say where the matter might end, or what
suspicions might not be awakened. Nay, the matter was worse, more
perilous and more lightly balanced; for, setting himself aside, none the
less was a brawl that brought up Basterga's name, a thing to be shunned.
The least thing might precipitate the scholar's arrest; his arrest must
lead to the loss of the _remedium_, if it existed; and the loss of the
_remedium_ to the loss of that which Messer Blondel had come to value
the more dearly the more he sacrificed to keep it--the Syndic's life.

He dared not call the watch, and he dared not use violence. As he awoke
to those two facts, he stood blinking in dismayed silence, swallowing
his rage, and hating the girl and hating the man with a dumb hatred.
Though the reasons which weighed with him were unknown to the two, they
could not be blind to his fear and his baffled mien; and had he been
alone they might have taken victory for certain. But Basterga was not
one to be so lightly thwarted. His intellect, his wit, his very mass
intimidated. Therefore it was with as much relief as surprise that Anne
read in his face the reflection of the other's doubts, and saw that he,
too, gave back.

"You are two fools!" he said. "Two great, big fools!" There was
resignation, there was something that was almost approval in his tones.
"You do not know what you are doing! Is there no way of making you hear
reason?"

"You cannot go up," Anne said. She had won, it seemed, without knowing
how she had won.

Basterga grunted; and then, "Ah, well," he said, addressing Claude, "if
I had you in the fields, my lad, it would not be that bit of metal would
save you!" And he spouted with appropriate gesture--

"--Illum fidi aequales, genua aegra trahentem
Jactantemque utroque caput, crassumque cruorem
Ore ejectantem mixtosque in sanguine dentes
Ducunt ad navis!

Half an hour in my company, and you would not be so bold."

Claude smiled with pardonable contempt, but made no reply, nor did he
change his attitude.

"Come!" Blondel muttered, addressing his ally with his eyes averted. "I
have reasons at present for letting them be!" They were strange reasons,
to judge by the hang-dog look of the proud magistrate. "But I shall know
h