ed eagerly.

'The watcher is gone, my lord,' the equerry answered.

'And has left no one?'

'No one that I can see.'

We both went into the next room and looked from the windows. The man
was certainly not where we had seen him before. But the rain was falling
heavily, the eaves were dripping, the street was a dark cavern with
only here and there a spark of light, and the fellow might be lurking
elsewhere. Maignan, being questioned, however, believed he had gone off
of set purpose.

'Which may be read half a dozen ways,' I remarked.

'At any rate, we are fasting,' M. de Rosny answered. Give me a full man
in a fight. Let us sit down and eat. It is no good jumping in the dark,
or meeting troubles half way.'

We were not through our meal, however, Simon Fleix waiting on us with a
pale face, when Maignan came in again from the dark room. 'My lord,' he
said quietly, 'three men have appeared. Two of them remain twenty paces
away. The third has come to the door.' As he spoke we heard a cautious
summons below, Maignan was for going down, but his master bade him
stand. Let the woman of the house go,' he said.

I remarked and long remembered M. de Rosny's SANG-FROID on this
occasion. His pistols he had already laid on a chair beside him throwing
his cloak over them; and now, while we waited, listening in breathless
silence, I saw him hand a large slice of bread-and-meat to his equerry,
who, standing behind his chair, began eating it with the same coolness.
Simon Fleix, on the other hand, stood gazing at the door, trembling in
every limb, and with so much of excitement and surprise in his attitude
that I took the precaution of bidding him, in a low voice, do nothing
without orders. At the same moment it occurred to me to extinguish two
of the four candles which had been lighted; and I did so, M. de Rosny
nodding assent, just as the muttered conversation which was being
carried on below ceased, and a man's tread sounded on the stairs.

It was followed immediately by a knock on the outside of our door.
Obeying my companion's look, I cried, 'Enter!'

A slender man of middle height, booted and wrapped up, with his face
almost entirely hidden by a fold of his cloak, came in quickly, and
closing the door behind him, advanced towards the table. 'Which is M. de
Rosny?' he said.

Rosny had carefully turned his face from the light, but at the sound
of the other's voice he sprang up with a cry of relief. He was about to
speak, w