of any work being done. And St. Georges, whose old soldier instincts
never deserted him, followed by his side, intent on seeing where the
animal was taken. The horse was to him--as once, four years ago,
another and a dearly loved horse had been--his one chance of reaching
Troyes easily, of finding his child, and--Aurelie de Roquemaure!

"A poor place," he said, speaking in as unnatural a tone as possible,
while all the time he wondered if the fellow recognised him. And he
took heart in recollecting that while he had been subject to this
man's brutalities, with scores of other victims, his head had always
been either shaved or cropped close and his mustache absent from his
face. Now, both hair and mustache were grown again; it might be that
the ex-_comite_ could not recall where he had known him. "A poor place
for a good horse! And none too secure, I imagine. It has no door. On a
winter night a horse stabled here would be chilled to the bone."

"It is not winter now," the man replied. "Your horse will come to no
hurt. And we have no thieves in Bayeux. We send them to the galleys!"
and his eye roved over St. Georges as he spoke.

The latter was, however, too wary to start at the hateful word;
moreover, since this man had been an overseer of the galleys, it was
not strange, perhaps, that the name of the system by which he had once
subsisted should rise to his mind. Therefore he replied quietly:

"That is well. Now for my room; but, first, a meal."

As he sat over that meal, a plain enough one as befitted the cabaret
in which he was, and partook of it in a squalid room which represented
the combined functions of living room for the man and his wife,
drinking place for those who patronized the house, and general common
room, he saw the fellow still casting long glances at him and
regarding him from under his eyelids.

And over and over again he asked himself: "Does he recognise me; and,
if so, what will he do?"

Presently the woman--who had been knitting behind a counter at which
she sat, superintending the bringing in of his sparse meal, and
ordering her husband, whom she addressed as Andre, to call to the
serving maid for one thing after another--left the room to see to
"monsieur's appartement." He had said to her he was very tired; he
would go to it at once if it was ready, early in the evening as it
was.

Then he rose as she disappeared and requested the man to show him
where it was, and, when he too rose, follo