peaking sharply. He was not going to put up
with mystery of this sort.

For answer Louis' eyes met his a moment; then the young man, without
speaking, slid across the room to a chair on which lay a book. He took
up the volume; it was his. Next he discovered another possession--or so
it seemed--approached it and took seisin of it in the same dumb way; and
so with another and another. Finally, blinking and looking askance, he
passed his eyes from side to side to learn if he had overlooked
anything.

But Claude's patience, though prolonged by curiosity, was at an end. He
took a step forward, and had the satisfaction of seeing Louis drop his
air of mystery, and recoil two paces. "If you don't speak," Claude
cried, "I will break every bone in your body! Do you hear, you sneaking
rogue? Do you forget that you are in my debt already? Tell me in two
words what this dumb show means, or I will have payment for all!"

Master Louis cringed, divided between the desire to flee and the fear of
losing his property. "You will be foolish if you make any fuss here," he
muttered, his arm raised to ward off a blow. "Besides, I'm going," he
continued, swallowing nervously as he spoke. "Let me go."

"Going?"

"Yes."

"Do you mean," Claude exclaimed in astonishment, "that you are going for
good?"

"Yes, and if you will take my advice"--with a look of sinister
meaning--"you will go too. That is all."

"Why? Why?" Claude repeated.

Louis' only answer was a shudder, which told Claude that if the other
did not know all, he knew much. Dismayed and confounded, Mercier
stepped back, and, with a secret grin of satisfaction, Louis turned
again to his task of searching the room. He found presently that for
which he had been looking--his cloak. He disentangled it, with a
peculiar look, from a woman's hood, contact with which he avoided with
care. That done, he cast it over his arm, and got back into his closet.
Claude heard him moving there, and presently he emerged a second time.

Precisely as he did so Claude caught the sound of a light footstep on
the stairs, the stair door opened, and Anne, her face weary, but
composed, came in. Her first glance fell on Louis, who, with his sack
and cloak on his arm, was in the act of closing the closet door. Habit
carried her second look to the hearth.

"You have let the fire go out," she said. Then, turning to Louis, in a
voice cold and free from emotion, "Are you going?" she asked.

He muttered tha