cloak over his head and affected to be asleep. What Grio, when
he came upon him, thought of a man who chose to sleep in the open in
such weather he did not learn, for after standing a while--as Claude's
ears told him--opposite the sleeper, the Spaniard turned and walked back
the way he had come. This time, and though he now had the wind at his
back, he walked briskly; as a man would walk in such weather, or as a
man might walk who had done his business.

Claude waited until his coarse, heavy figure had disappeared through the
Porte Tertasse; nay, he waited until the light began to fail. Then,
while he could still pick out the red potsherd, he approached the wall,
leant over it, and, failing to detect anything with his eyes, passed his
fingers down the stones.

They alighted on a nail; a nail thrust lightly into the mortar below the
coping stone. For what purpose? His blood beginning to move more quickly
Claude asked himself the question. To support a rope? And so to enable
some one to leave the town? The nail, barely pushed into the mortar,
would hardly support the weight of a dozen yards of twine.

Perhaps the nail was there by chance, and Grio had naught to do with it.
He could settle that doubt. In a few moments he had settled it. Under
cover of the growing darkness, he walked to the place at which he had
seen Grio pause for the first time. A short search discovered a second
nail as lightly secured as the other. Had he not been careful it would
have fallen beneath his touch.

What did the nails there? Claude was not stupid, yet he was long in
hitting on an explanation. It was a fanciful, extravagant notion when he
got it, but one that set his chilled blood running, and his hands
tingling, one that might mean much to himself and to others. It was
unlikely, it was improbable, it was out of the common; but it was an
explanation. It was a mighty thing to hang upon two weak nails; but such
as it was--and he turned it over and over in his mind before he dared
entertain it--he could find no other. And presently, his eyes alight,
his pulses riotous, his foot dancing, he walked down the
Corraterie--with scarce a look at the house which had held his thoughts
all day--and passed into the town. As he passed through the gateway he
hung an instant and cast an inquisitive eye into the guard-room of the
Tertasse. It was nearly empty. Two men sat drowsing before the fire,
their boot-heels among the embers, a black jack between the