til Sunday," he said, "and will closely
watch my opportunity, when I can with the greatest amount of safety
enter the Temple building and take possession of the child. I shall, of
course choose the moment when the Simons are actually on the move, with
their successors probably coming in at about the same time. God alone
knows," he added earnestly, "how I shall contrive to get possession of
the child; at the moment I am just as much in the dark about that as you
are."

He paused a moment, and suddenly his grave face seemed flooded with
sunshine, a kind of lazy merriment danced in his eyes, effacing all
trace of solemnity within them.

"La!" he said lightly, "on one point I am not at all in the dark, and
that is that His Majesty King Louis XVII will come out of that ugly
house in my company next Sunday, the nineteenth day of January in this
year of grace seventeen hundred and ninety-four; and this, too, do I
know--that those murderous blackguards shall not lay hands on me whilst
that precious burden is in my keeping. So I pray you, my good Armand, do
not look so glum," he added with his pleasant, merry laugh; "you'll need
all your wits about you to help us in our undertaking."

"What do you wish me to do, Percy?" said the young man simply.

"In one moment I will tell you. I want you all to understand the
situation first. The child will be out of the Temple on Sunday, but at
what hour I know not. The later it will be the better would it suit
my purpose, for I cannot get him out of Paris before evening with any
chance of safety. Here we must risk nothing; the child is far better off
as he is now than he would be if he were dragged back after an abortive
attempt at rescue. But at this hour of the night, between nine and ten
o'clock, I can arrange to get him out of Paris by the Villette gate, and
that is where I want you, Ffoulkes, and you, Tony, to be, with some kind
of covered cart, yourselves in any disguise your ingenuity will suggest.
Here are a few certificates of safety; I have been making a collection
of them for some time, as they are always useful."

He dived into the wide pocket of his coat and drew forth a number of
cards, greasy, much-fingered documents of the usual pattern which the
Committee of General Security delivered to the free citizens of the
new republic, and without which no one could enter or leave any town or
country commune without being detained as "suspect." He glanced at them
and handed them