son can he spare the girl?"

"There is no plot," repeated La Mothe, more emphatically than before,
"and I shall remain in Amboise." Crossing the room he knelt beside his
saddle-bags, opening and taking from them the package wrapped in a
linen napkin which contained the King's gifts to the Dauphin. "I
suppose I must live upon my knapsack for the present, but this I shall
take with me. Is there anything more to be said?"

"Not for the present."

"Then good night."

The passage was plunged in the same quiet and as deep a gloom as when
he had traversed it an hour before, and La Mothe plumed himself on
regaining his room unseen. But had he paused and turned at the first
angle he would have seen the shadow which lay stretched in the deeper
shadows of the doorway stir itself, and Hugues' white face, a blur upon
the darkness, watching him. Beyond that door slept the Dauphin, and
Villon was right when he said that the guards of Amboise were not pikes
or cross-bows, but eyes that saw and hearts that loved.

CHAPTER XIII

"FRIEND IS MORE THAN FAMILY"

With his overnight's irritation still unallayed, and more than ever
convinced that the prejudice which could so misread Mademoiselle de
Vesc must also wrong Francois Villon, La Mothe was early at the Chien
Noir. Of the Amboise household he had seen nothing, which means that
he had looked in vain for Ursula of the Cupid's bow, and his temper was
not thereby improved. But he had the day before him, and he promised
himself some recompense for his disappointment before it was many hours
old. Meanwhile, he would show Villon that all who came from Valmy were
not sharers in Commines' harsh judgment. He found the poet
contemplative over the remains of his breakfast, but in a mood as
captious as his own.

"Have you found already that the inn has a warmer welcome than the
Chateau? I tell you this, my young friend, it will cost you less to
live here than there, though in either case it is the King who pays."

"To every man his wages," answered La Mothe, but Villon shook his head.
His knowledge of the paying of wages, or at least of the earning of
them, gave the chance phrase a sinister meaning.

"As to that, we all look for more than our dues in this world and less
in that to come. God's mercy keep us from justice! If our wages were
paid in full where would we be? What is little Charles doing?"

"Sleeping, I suppose."

"And Mademoiselle de Vesc?"

"How should