en, with a final bark of contempt, he went to recover
his sword, which had been flung into a corner of the room. He was
stooping in the act, when a quick step rang behind him on the threshold,
an angry voice harsh and metallic pronounced his name:

"Rebecque!"

The sword clattered from Rabecque's hand suddenly gone
nerveless--nerveless with sheer joy, all else forgotten in the
perception that there, safe and sound, stood his beloved master.

"Monsieur!" he cried, and the tears welled up to the rough servant's
eyes. "Monsieur!" he cried again, and then with the tears streaming
down his cheeks, sallow and wrinkled as parchment, "Oh, thank God!" he
blubbered. "Thank God!"

"For what?" asked Garnache, coming forward, a scowl like a thunder-cloud
upon his brow. "Where is the coach, where the troopers? Where is
mademoiselle? Answer me!"

He caught Rabecque's wrist in a grip that threatened to snap it. His
face was livid, his eyes aflame.

"They--they--" stammered Rabecque. He had not the courage to tell the
thing that had happened. He feared Garnache would strike him dead.

And then out of his terror he gathered an odd daring. He spoke to
Garnache as never he had dreamt to speak to him, and it may well be that
by his tone and by what he said he saved his life just then.

"You fool," he cried to him. "I told you to be on your guard. I warned
you to go warily. But you would not heed me. You know better than
Rabecque. You would have your way. You must go a-brawling. And they
duped you, they fooled you to the very top of their bent, monsieur."

Garnache dropped the servant's hand and stood back a pace. That
counter-blast of passion and that plain speaking from a quarter so
unexpected served, in part at least, to sober him. He understood the
thing that had happened, the thing that already he suspected must have
happened; but he understood too that he alone was to blame for it--he
and his cursed temper.

"Who--who fooled me?" he stammered.

"Gaubert--the fellow that calls himself Gaubert. He and his friends.
They fooled you away. Then Gaubert returned with a tale that you
had been killed and that there was a disturbance in the Champs aux
Capuchins. Monsieur de Tressan was here, as ill-luck would have it,
and Gaubert implored him to send soldiers thither to quell the riot.
He dispatched the escort. I sought in vain to stay them. He would not
listen to me. The troopers went, and then Monsieur Gaubert entered
the inn, to