parole!" he said scornfully. "I mean no offence, but I can
afford no risks. Come, Monsieur La Mothe, do not put me and yourself
to the indignity of a search."

At the contempt in the scornful voice La Mothe started, flushing hotly
in the darkness. But the memory of the deadly deceit practised on his
own faith was too recent, and he controlled himself. How could he
blame a stranger for judging the servant by the master?

"The ring came from the King and should go back to the King. On your
honour, is this part of your duty?"

"My most solemn duty, as God is above us; without the signet I cannot
fulfil all that has been laid upon me"--which was true in a sense. The
order stolen from Beaufoy might gain him entrance to Valmy, but without
the signet he could not count on forcing a way to Louis himself.

"On compulsion, then," said La Mothe, giving up the signet, and
thenceforward they rode in silence, not pressing their horses unduly;
but it vexed him to think that Louis would not trust him to return the
ring.

If Stephen La Mothe was sick at heart, who could blame him or charge it
to the discredit of his courage? The rough lesson had been roughly
taught that it is better to tramp the road of life afoot and one's own
master than to ride a-horseback under compulsion. He had learned, too,
that on the tree of knowledge of the ways of men are many fruits which
pucker the mouth, as well as those which gladden the spirit. As to the
ways of women, that is an altogether different book--a serial, let us
say, but in how many numbers?

Of these ways La Mothe learned one before the sun of a new day had
risen. Somewhere in the neighbourhood of the auberge where Paul
Beaufoy had purchased breakfast at a cost greater than an empty purse,
the troopers were dismissed after a brief conference, from which La
Mothe was excluded, and the two rode on alone. Each was preoccupied
and neither spoke. Knowing the relationship which existed between
Valmy and Amboise there seemed to La Mothe nothing strange in the
procedure followed both at the Chateau and afterwards. If the King
suspected he had joined the camp of the Dauphin, then arrest might have
been resisted; but once upon the road, and his parole passed, there was
no further need for force. The King who kept no faith was shrewd to
know when he could trust the faith of others, and the troopers
doubtless were required elsewhere. The truth was they followed at a
distance, in or