m below the bed he lay on, and was
only interrupted and drowned once by the booming of the cathedral clock
striking three. Three! and he had lain down in early evening had slept for
hours. Yet how weary he still felt! It was as yet quite dark--the dawn
would not come for another hour, he knew--what could those sounds below
mean? He raised himself on his elbow to listen and hear more plainly.

At first he could distinguish nothing but the deep hum, broken now and
again by the sharper, more metallic sound; but as he bent over the
bed--being now quite wide awake and with his senses naturally very
acute--he recognised what those sounds were. And more especially was
he enabled to do so from the fact that the planks of the floor were
not joined very closely together--or had come apart since they were
first laid down--as he had observed when he entered the room the day
before.

The sounds were Andre and his wife talking. At this hour of the night,
or morning! And gradually, with his senses strained to the utmost, he
was enabled to catch almost every word that they uttered.

"But," said the woman, "I like it not. It is treachery--_bassesse_.
And he is _beau_. _Mon Dieu! mais il est beau_----"

"_Peste!_" the man replied. "It is always of _les beaux_ you think.
Once 'twas the fisher from Havre, then Le Bic, of the _marechausse_,
now this one. And why base? The king pays a hundred gold pistoles for
such as he. And if not to us, then others will get it. Why not we?"

"You are sure? You are not mistaken?"

"Sure! From the first moment. Though I held my peace. Ho! why frighten
the bird away from the nest? At first the hair and mustache puzzled
me--then----"

St. Georges started as he heard this. _Now_ he knew of whom they
talked.

"--it came back to me. A _galerien_ in the Raquin, a surly dog--one of
the worst; one of those who had been gentlemen. Gentlemen! _Ma foi!_ I
have made their backs tingle often, often!"

"Ay!" muttered St. Georges between his teeth, "you have! 'Tis true."

"You are certain?" the woman asked again. "A mistake would be
terrible--would send you back to the galleys yourself, only as beaten
slave--not overseer."

"Certain! So will the others be when he is taken--alive or dead. There
on his shoulder, _ma belle_, they will see proof--the _fleur-de-lis_.
Fortunate for him he was not a religious prisoner, a victim of our
holy Church. Otherwise it would have been burnt into his cheek, and he
would have