ck on the other
plan," one of the councillors said with an air of much wisdom.

"I think that is so. Nor do I think that anything will be done during
the present severe weather."

"They like it no better than we do!"

"But the roads are good in this frost," Fabri said. "If it be a question
of moving guns or wagons----"

"But it is not, by your leave, Messer Fabri, as I am informed," the man
who had spoken before objected; supporting his opinion simply because he
had voiced it, a thing seen every day in such assemblies. Fabri replied
on him in the other sense: and presently Blondel had the satisfaction of
listening to a discussion in which the one party said a dozen things
that he saw would be of use to him--some day.

One only said not a word, and that was Petitot. He listened to all with
a puzzled look. He resented the insult which Blondel had flung at his
friend Baudichon, but he saw all going against them, and no chance of
redress; nay, capital was being made out of that which should have been
a disadvantage. Worst of all, he was uneasy, fancying--he was very
shrewd--that he caught a glimpse, under the Fourth Syndic's manner, of
another man: that he detected signs of emotion, a feverishness and
imperiousness not quite explained by the circumstances.

He got the notion from this that the Fourth Syndic had learned more from
Basterga than he had disclosed. His notion, even so, went no further
than the suspicion that Blondel was hiding knowledge out of a desire to
reap all the glory. But he did not like it. "He was always for risking,
for risking!" he thought. "This is another case of it. God grant it go
well!" His wife, his children, his daughters, rose in a picture before
him, and he hated Blondel, who had none of these. He would have put him
to death for running the tithe of a risk.

When the council broke up, Fabri drew Blondel aside. "The bird is flown,
but what of the nest?" he asked. "Has he left nothing?"

"Between you and me," Blondel replied under his breath, as his eyes
sought the other's, "I hope to make him speak yet. But not a word!"

"Ah!"

"Not a word! But there is just a chance. And it will be everything to us
if I can induce him to speak."

"I see that. But the house? Could you not search it?"

"That would be to scare him finally."

"You have made no perquisition there?"

"None. I have heard," Blondel continued, hesitating as if he had not
quite made up his mind to speak, "some things--