nd sometimes give the cursed Englishman a good
shake-up. He has had five days of it, and not one wink of sleep during
that time--not one single minute of rest--and he only gets enough food
to keep him alive. I tell you he can't last. Citizen Chauvelin had a
splendid idea there. It will all come right in a day or two."

"H'm!" grunted the other sulkily; "those Englishmen are tough."

"Yes!" retorted Heron with a grim laugh and a leer of savagery that made
his gaunt face look positively hideous--"you would have given out after
three days, friend de Batz, would you not? And I warned you, didn't I? I
told you if you tampered with the brat I would make you cry in mercy to
me for death."

"And I warned you," said the other imperturbably, "not to worry so much
about me, but to keep your eyes open for those cursed Englishmen."

"I am keeping my eyes open for you, nevertheless, my friend. If I
thought you knew where the vermin's spawn was at this moment I would--"

"You would put me on the same rack that you or your precious friend,
Chauvelin, have devised for the Englishman. But I don't know where the
lad is. If I did I would not be in Paris."

"I know that," assented Heron with a sneer; "you would soon be after the
reward--over in Austria, what?--but I have your movements tracked day
and night, my friend. I dare say you are as anxious as we are as to the
whereabouts of the child. Had he been taken over the frontier you would
have been the first to hear of it, eh? No," he added confidently, and
as if anxious to reassure himself, "my firm belief is that the original
idea of these confounded Englishmen was to try and get the child over
to England, and that they alone know where he is. I tell you it won't
be many days before that very withered Scarlet Pimpernel will order
his followers to give little Capet up to us. Oh! they are hanging about
Paris some of them, I know that; citizen Chauvelin is convinced that the
wife isn't very far away. Give her a sight of her husband now, say I,
and she'll make the others give the child up soon enough."

The man laughed like some hyena gloating over its prey. Sir Andrew
nearly betrayed himself then. He had to dig his nails into his own flesh
to prevent himself from springing then and there at the throat of that
wretch whose monstrous ingenuity had invented torture for the fallen
enemy far worse than any that the cruelties of medieval Inquisitions had
devised.

So they would not let him