sence.

"You knave! I wish I had spitted you!" Roquelaure cried, with an oath,
when I had done so. "You heard all?"

"Yes, Monsieur."

They scowled at me between wrath and chagrin. "Friend Rosny, you were a
fool," M. de Roquelaure said with grimness.

"I think I was," the other answered. "But a flogging, a gag, and the
black hole will keep his tongue still as long as is needful."

Henry laughed. "I think we can do better than that!" he said, with a
glance of good nature. "Hark you, my lad; you are big enough to fight.
We will trust you, and you shall wear sword for the first time. But if
the surprise fail, if word of our coming go before us, we shall know
whom to blame, and you will have to reckon with M. de Rosny."

I fell on my knees and thanked him with tears; while Rosny and M. St.
Martin remonstrated. "Take my word for it, he will blurt it out!" said
the one; and the other, "You had better deliver him to me, sire."

"No," Henry said kindly. "I will trust him. He comes of a good stock; if
the oak bends, what tree shall we trust?"

"The oak bends fast enough, sire, when it is a sapling," Rosny retorted.

"In that case you shall apply _your_ sapling!" the King answered,
laughing. "Hark ye, my lad, will you be silent?"

I promised--with tears in my eyes; and with that, and a mind full of
amazement, I was dismissed, and left the presence, a grown man;
overjoyed that the greatest scrape of my life had turned out the
happiest; foreseeing honour, and rewards, and already scorning the other
pages as immeasurably beneath me. It was a full minute before I thought
of Antoine, and the chance that he, too, before he turned back, had
overheard the King's plan. Then I stood in the passage horrified--my
first impulse to return and tell the King. It came too late, however,
for in the mean time he and M. de Rosny had repaired to the closet, and
the others had withdrawn; and while I stood hesitating, Antoine slipped
out of the ante-chamber, and came to me on the stairs.

His first words went some way towards relieving me; they told me that he
had overheard something but not all; enough to know that the King
intended to surprise a place of strength, and a few details, but not the
name of the place. As soon as I understood this, and that I had nothing
to fear from him, I could not hide my triumph. When he declared his
intention of going with the expedition, I laughed at him.

"You!" I said. "You don't understand. This is no