f. "I shouldn't have
thought there were many travellers in this out-of-the-way place."

"The place is not out-of-the-way," retorted the old man gruffly. "The
road is a good one, and a short cut between Vienne and Chambery. We get
plenty of travellers this way!"

"Well! I did not strike the road, unfortunately. I saw your lights in
the distance and cut across some fields. It was pretty rough in the
dark, I can tell you."

"That's just what those other cavaliers said, when they turned up here
about an hour ago. A noisy crowd they were. I had no room for them in my
house, so they had to go."

St. Genis at once put down his knife and fork.

"A noisy crowd of travellers," he exclaimed, "who arrived here an hour
ago?"

"Parbleu!" rejoined the other, "and all wanting beds too. I had no room.
I can only put up one or two travellers. I sent them on to Levasseur's,
further along the road. Only the wounded man I could not turn away. He
is up in our best bedroom."

"A wounded man? You have a wounded man here, petit pere?"

"Oh! it's not much of a wound," explained the old man with unconscious
irrelevance. "He himself calls it a mere scratch. But my old woman took
a fancy to him: he is young and well-looking, you understand. . . . She
is clever at bandages too, so she has looked after him as if he were her
own son."

Mechanically, St. Genis had once more taken up his knife and fork,
though of a truth the last of his hunger had vanished. But these
Dauphine peasants were suspicious and queer-tempered, and already the
young man's surprise had matured into a plan which he would not be able
to carry through without the help of Aristide Briot. Noisy cavaliers--he
mused to himself--a wounded man! . . . wounded by the stray shot aimed
at him by Crystal de Cambray! Indeed, St. Genis had much ado to keep his
excitement in check, and to continue with a pretence at eating while
Briot watched him with stolid indifference.

"Petit pere," said the young man at last with as much unconcern as he
could affect. "I have been thinking that you have--unwittingly--given me
an excellent piece of news. I do believe that the man in your best
bedroom upstairs is a friend of mine whom I was to have met at Lyons
to-day and whose absence from our place of tryst had made me very
anxious. I was imagining that all sorts of horrors had happened to him,
for he is in the secret service of the King and exposed to every kind of
danger. His being wounded in