le. Once outside the door he paused. Between Saint-Pierre,
Leslie, and himself no love was lost, but the bond of a united
watchfulness against a common danger bound them to mutual service.

"Where was it from?" asked Saint-Pierre. But Commines shook his head,
running his fingers inside the collar of his doublet significantly.
Complacency, even when it was the complacency of self-defence, had its
limits.

"I dare not," he whispered back. "He is in the mood of the devil.
What is he doing now?"

As if playing the part of sentry Saint-Pierre turned and walked twice
or thrice up and down before the open door, glancing cautiously within.

"Tearing the despatch, and burning it piecemeal in the brazier."

"I feared as much. If you love yourselves, gentlemen, see that you do
not cross him to-day. And when I am gone from Valmy walk warily."

"Where are you going, Monsieur de Commines?"

"To Amboise, and I would have given a thousand crowns for one look at
that despatch."

But it is a question whether the look would have taught him much,
though he had studied the paper for an hour. It was blank; beyond the
superscription and the "Louis" sprawled across the corner there was not
one single word. And yet, to one trained by ten years service in his
master's ways of crooked cunning the very blank would have been
eloquent of warning.

CHAPTER IV

THE JUSTICE OF THE KING

As Commines crossed the courtyard to his lodgings his face was puckered
with anxious thought. Many a time he had fished for his master in
waters both foul and troubled, but always he had known the prey he
angled for. Now, and he shook his head like a man who argues against
his doubts, but with little hope of compelling conviction, he was not
sure. Or was it that he was afraid to be sure? Was he afraid to say
bluntly out, even in the secret of his own mind, the King desires the
death of the Dauphin and for good cause?

That there might well be cause, that there might well be a sinister
upheaval against the King with the Dauphin as its rallying centre he
could easily believe, even without the evidence of the despatch.
France had never yet known such a nation-builder as Louis. His
quarries had lain north, south, and east. In his twenty-two years upon
the throne he had added to the crown Artois, Burgundy, the northern
parts of Picardy, Anjou, Franche-Comte, Provence, and Roussillon. To
secure such a wholesale aggrandizement he had been un