and last night brought me here with him.
But I had never seen him till this time yesterday. I know nothing about
him save that he seemed a very free-handed, easy master."

To a nice ear I might have seemed a little too voluble, but the captain
only laughed at my patent fright.

"Oh, you need not look so whey-faced; I have no warrant for your arrest.
I dare say you are as great a rogue as he, but the order says nothing
about you. Don't swoon away; you are in no peril."

I was stung to be thought such a craven, but I pocketed the insult, and
merely answered:

"I assure you, monsieur, I know naught of the matter." Yesterday I would
have blurted out to him the whole truth; decidedly my experiences were
teaching me something.

"Come now, I can't fool about here all day," he said impatiently. "Tell
me where that precious master of yours is now. And be quicker about it
than this old mule."

Maitre Menard, then, had told them nothing--staunch old loyalist. He
knew perfectly that M. le Comte had gone home, and they had throttled
him, and yet he had not told. Well, he should not lose by it.

"Monsieur is about the streets somewhere. On my life, I know not where.
But I know he will be back here to supper."

"Oh, you don't know, don't you? Then perhaps Gaspard can quicken your
memory."

At the word the soldier who had attended to Maitre Menard came over to
me and taught me how it feels to be hanged. I said to myself that if I
had talked like a dastard I was not one, and every time he let me speak
I gasped, "I don't know." The room was black to me, and the sea roared
in my ears, and I wondered whether I had done well to tell the lie. For
had I said that my master was in the Hotel St Quentin, still those
fellows would have found it no easy job to take him. Vigo might not be
ready to defend Mlle. de Montluc, but he would defend Monsieur's heir to
the last gasp. Yet I would not yield before the choking Maitre Menard
had withstood, and I stuck to my lie.

Then I bethought me, while the room reeled about me and my head seemed
like to burst, that perchance if they should keep me here a captive for
M. le Comte's arrival he might really follow to see what had become of
me. I turned sick with the fear of it, and resolved on the truth. But
Gaspard's last gullet-gripe had robbed me of the power to speak. I could
only pant and choke. As I struggled painfully for wind, the door was
flung open before a tall young man in black. Through