poil went on: "Saldagno at Toledo."

Cocardasse took up the tale: "Pinto at Valladolid."

Passepoil concluded the catalogue: "Joel at Grenada, Pepe at Cordova."

"All with the same wound," Cocardasse commented, with a curious solemnity
in his habitually jovial voice.

Passepoil added, lugubriously: "The thrust between the eyes."

Cocardasse summed up, significantly: "The thrust of Nevers."

The pair were silent for an instant, looking at each other with something
like dismay upon their faces, and their minds were evidently busy with
old days and old dangers.

Passepoil broke the silence. "They didn't make much by their
blood-money."

"Yes," said Cocardasse; "but we, who refused to hunt Lagardere, we are
alive."

Passepoil cast a melancholy glance over his own dingy habiliments and
then over the garments of Cocardasse, garments which, although glowing
enough in color, were over-darned and over-patched to suggest opulence.
"In a manner," he said, dryly.

Cocardasse drew himself up proudly and slapped his chest. "Poor but
honest."

Passepoil allowed a faint smile, expressive of satisfaction, to steal
over his melancholy countenance. "Thank Heaven, in Paris we can't meet
Lagardere."

Cocardasse appeared plainly to share the pleasure of his old friend. "An
exile dare not return," he said, emphatically, with the air of a man who
feels sure of himself and of his words. But it is the way of destiny very
often, even when a man is surest of himself and surest of his words, to
interpose some disturbing factor in his confident calculations, to make
some unexpected move upon the chess-board of existence, which altogether
baffles his plans and ruins his hopes. So many people had crossed the
bridge that morning that it really seemed little less than probable that
the appearance of a fresh pedestrian upon its arch could have any serious
effect upon the satisfactory reflections of the two bravos. Yet at that
moment a man did appear upon the bridge, who paused and surveyed
Cocardasse and Passepoil, whose backs were towards him, with a
significant smile.

The new-comer was humbly clad, very much in the fashion of one of those
gypsies who had pitched their camp so close to the wayside tavern; but if
the man's clothes were something of the gypsy habit, he carried a sword
under his ragged mantle, and it was plain from the man's face that he was
not a gypsy. His handsome, daring, humorous face, bronzed by many suns
and lined