which startled the governor as if it had been the voice of doom. "But
we could not have found you better prepared, it seems. Do you always
sup as late as this?"

For a moment the villain could not speak, but leaned against the
doorpost, with his cheeks gone white and his jaw fallen, the most
pitiable spectacle to be conceived. I affected to see nothing,
however, but went by him easily, and into the room, drawing off my
gauntlets as entered. The dicers, from their seats beside a table on
the hearth, gazed at me, turned to stone. I took up a glass, filled
it, and drank it off. "Now I am better!" I said. "But this is not the
warmest of welcomes, M. de Bareilles."

He muttered something, looking fearfully from one to another of us;
and, his hand shaking, filled a glass and pledged me. The wine gave
him courage and impudence: he began to speak; and though his hurried
sentences and excited manner must have betrayed him to the least
suspicious, we pretended to see nothing, but rather to congratulate
ourselves on his late hours and timely preparations. And certainly
nothing could have seemed more cheerful in comparison with the squalid
inn and miry road from which we came than this smiling feast; if death
had not seemed to my eyes to lurk behind it.

"I thought it likely that you would lie at Saury," he said, with a
ghastly smile.

"And yet made this preparation for us?" I answered politely, yet
letting a little of my real mind be seen. "Well, as a fact, M.
Bareilles, save for one thing we should have lain there."

"And that thing?" he asked, his tongue almost failing him as he put
the question.

"The fact that you have a villain in your company," I answered.

"What?" he stammered.

"A villain, M. le Capitaine Martin," I continued sternly. "You sent
him out this morning against the Great Band; instead, he took it upon
him to lay a plot for me, from which I have only narrowly escaped."

"Martin?"

"Yes, M. de Bareilles, Martin!" I answered roundly, fixing him with my
eyes; while Parabere went quietly to the door, and stood by it. "If I
am not mistaken, I hear him at this moment dismounting below. Let us
understand one another therefore, I propose to sup with you, but I
shall not sit down until he hangs."

It would be useless for me to attempt to paint the mixture of horror,
perplexity, and shame which distorted Bareilles' countenance as I spoke
these words. While Parabere's attitude and my demea