suspects nothing--and there I helped them to unload the furniture--with
the exception of the linen basket, of course. After that I drove my
laundry cart to a house I knew of and collected a number of linen
baskets, which I had arranged should be in readiness for me. Thus loaded
up I left Paris by the Vincennes gate, and drove as far as Bagnolet,
where there is no road except past the octroi, where the officials might
have proved unpleasant. So I lifted His Majesty out of the basket and
we walked on hand in hand in the darkness and the rain until the poor
little feet gave out. Then the little fellow--who has been wonderfully
plucky throughout, indeed, more a Capet than a Bourbon--snuggled up in
my arms and went fast asleep, and--and--well, I think that's all, for
here we are, you see."

"But if Madame Simon had not been amenable to bribery?" suggested Lord
Tony after a moment's silence.

"Then I should have had to think of something else."

"If during the removal of the furniture Heron had remained resolutely in
the room?"

"Then, again, I should have had to think of something else; but remember
that in life there is always one supreme moment when Chance--who is
credited to have but one hair on her head--stands by you for a brief
space of time; sometimes that space is infinitesimal--one minute, a few
seconds--just the time to seize Chance by that one hair. So I pray you
all give me no credit in this or any other matter in which we all work
together, but the quickness of seizing Chance by the hair during the
brief moment when she stands by my side. If Madame Simon had been
un-amenable, if Heron had remained in the room all the time, if Cochefer
had had two looks at the dummy instead of one--well, then, something
else would have helped me, something would have occurred; something--I
know not what--but surely something which Chance meant to be on our
side, if only we were quick enough to seize it--and so you see how
simple it all is."

So simple, in fact, that it was sublime. The daring, the pluck, the
ingenuity and, above all, the super-human heroism and endurance which
rendered the hearers of this simple narrative, simply told, dumb with
admiration.

Their thoughts now were beyond verbal expression.

"How soon was the hue and cry for the child about the streets?" asked
Tony, after a moment's silence.

"It was not out when I left the gates of Paris," said Blakeney
meditatively; "so quietly has the news of the esc