itor; "what does he
want?"

"To see the Fathers of the Holy Office," said the servitor, wondering if
he had sufficiently wiped the wine from his mouth ere he came in--the
Surintendant was regarding him so sternly.

"He looks like a shepherd of the hills," said the acolyte; "indeed, I
have seen him before--at Collioure. He is a servant, so he says, of Don
Raphael Llorient!"

"Ah," said Mariana quickly, "then I think I can guess his message. I
have already spoken of it with Don Raphael."

"Bid three stout familiars of the Office stand unseen behind the curtain
there, weapons in hand," commanded Surintendant Teruel; "then show the
man up!"

Jean-aux-Choux entered, long-haired, wild-eyed, his cloak of rough
frieze falling low about his ankles, and his hand upon the dagger-hilt
which had once been red with the blood of the Guise.

The three looked silently at him, with that chill, pitiless gaze which
made no difference between a man asked to speak his message and him who,
by one word out of his own mouth, must deliver himself to torture and to
death.

"Stand!" commanded the Chief Inquisitor, "speak your message briefly,
and if all be well, you are at liberty to return as you came!"

The threat was hardly veiled, but Jean-aux-Choux stood undaunted.

"Death is my familiar friend," he said; "I am not afraid. God, who hath
oft delivered me from the tooth of the lion and the claw of the bear,
can deliver me also from this Philistine."

The two judges of men's souls looked at each other. This was perilously
like fanaticism. They knew well how to deal with that. But Mariana only
laughed and tapped his forehead covertly with his forefinger.

"He is harmless, but mad, this fellow," he murmured; "I have often
spoken with him while I abode at the house of Don Raphael of Collioure.
He hath had in his youth some smattering of letters, but now what little
lear he had trots all skimble-skamble in his head. Yet, failing our
young Dominican of Sens--well, we might go farther and fare worse."

Then he turned to Jean-aux-Choux.

"Your message, shepherd?" he said. "Fear nothing. We shall not harm
you."

"Had I supposed so, you would not have found me here--out of the mouth
of the lion, and out of----"

"That will do," said Mariana, cutting him short; "whence come you?"

"From the camp of two kings, a great and a little, a true and a false,
the lion and the dog----"

"Speak plainly--we have little time to waste!"

"Plainl