ying
jingle of metal bits of man-harness and steed-harness I knew some
cavalcade was passing by on the street beneath my windows. Also, I
wondered idly who it was. From somewhere--and I knew where, for I knew
it was from the inn yard--came the ring and stamp of hoofs and an
impatient neigh that I recognized as belonging to my waiting horse.

Came steps and movements--steps openly advertised as suppressed with the
intent of silence and that yet were deliberately noisy with the secret
intent of rousing me if I still slept. I smiled inwardly at the rascal's
trick.

"Pons," I ordered, without opening my eyes, "water, cold water, quick, a
deluge. I drank over long last night, and now my gullet scorches."

"And slept over long to-day," he scolded, as he passed me the water,
ready in his hand.

I sat up, opened my eyes, and carried the tankard to my lips with both my
hands. And as I drank I looked at Pons.

Now note two things. I spoke in French; I was not conscious that I spoke
in French. Not until afterward, back in solitary, when I remembered what
I am narrating, did I know that I had spoken in French--ay, and spoken
well. As for me, Darrell Standing, at present writing these lines in
Murderers' Row of Folsom Prison, why, I know only high school French
sufficient to enable me to read the language. As for my speaking
it--impossible. I can scarcely intelligibly pronounce my way through a
menu.

But to return. Pons was a little withered old man. He was born in our
house--I know, for it chanced that mention was made of it this very day I
am describing. Pons was all of sixty years. He was mostly toothless,
and, despite a pronounced limp that compelled him to go slippity-hop, he
was very alert and spry in all his movements. Also, he was impudently
familiar. This was because he had been in my house sixty years. He had
been my father's servant before I could toddle, and after my father's
death (Pons and I talked of it this day) he became my servant. The limp
he had acquired on a stricken field in Italy, when the horsemen charged
across. He had just dragged my father clear of the hoofs when he was
lanced through the thigh, overthrown, and trampled. My father, conscious
but helpless from his own wounds, witnessed it all. And so, as I say,
Pons had earned such a right to impudent familiarity that at least there
was no gainsaying him by my father's son.

Pons shook his head as I drained the huge draught.