as John Cassidy,
travelling from Paris to Dublin and back on urgent private business,
duly signed and countersigned. It gave a description of the bearer,
even down to the clothes he wore: I supposed to enable any official who
passed him from one point of his journey to another to identify him.
The letters were two in number, one addressed to Citoyen Duport, a
Deputy of the National Convention, and marked with the greatest urgency.
The other--and this startled me the most--to one George Lestrange at
Paris, with no other address. Lestrange! The name called to mind one
or two memories. Was not the gay young officer I had once ferried
across to Rathmullan a Lestrange--a kinsman of my lady; and was not
Biddy McQuilkin of Kerry Keel, who once set her cap at my father, in the
service of this same Lestrange's aunt in Paris? Strange if this hot
errand should concern them! All things considered, I decided that the
wisest thing would be for me to put on the dead man's clothes, and make
myself in general appearance as near to the description of the passport
as possible. In fact, for the rest of this journey I must be John
Cassidy himself, travelling post to Paris, with a horse waiting on him
at each stage, a purse full of money, a pistol, and a belt containing
two urgent letters of introduction. Little dreamed I when I sneaked out
of Brest under the belly of that lumbering diligence that I was to go to
my journey's end in this style!

Before I started I buried the dead man, and along with him my cast-off
clothes, in a pit in the wood, which I covered over with leaves and
moss. Then I mounted my horse, stuck my loaded pistol in my belt,
commended my ways to Heaven, and cantered on in the face of the rosy
summer dawn towards Paris.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

A RAT-TRAP IN THE RUE D'AGNES.

The worth of my credentials was very soon put to the test; for an hour's
ride brought me to Morlaix, where, as I had learned from a hastily
scrawled list of places on the cover of the passport, I was to expect my
first fresh horse.

Here there was some grumbling at my lateness and wondering as to the
cause of it. For the diligence guard had reported that I (or rather he
whom I represented) had started ahead of the coach from Brest, and
should have passed Morlaix three hours in front.

Whereupon I explained that I had been attacked by a highwayman, and
obliged to hide in the woods till daylight. At which they laughed, and
said if I ch