that he felt so
easily secure on the height of his gentlehood that Peyrot's impudence
merely tickled him.

"I was wondering," he answered pleasantly, "how long you have dwelt in
this town and I not known it. You are from Guienne, methinks."

"Carcassonne way," the other said indifferently. Then memory bringing a
deep twinkle to his eye, he added: "What think you, monsieur? I was left
a week-old babe on the monastery step; was reared up in holiness within
its sacred walls; chorister at ten, novice at eighteen, full-fledged
friar, fasting, praying, and singing misereres, exhorting dying saints
and living sinners, at twenty."

"A very pretty brotherhood, you for sample."

"Nay, I am none. Else I might have stayed. But one night I took
leg-bail, lived in the woods till my hair grew, and struck out for
Paris. And never regretted it, neither."

He leaned his head back, his eyes fixed contemplatively on the ceiling,
and burst into song, in voice as melodious as a lark's:

_Piety and Grace and Gloom,
For such like guests I have no room!
Piety and Gloom and Grace,
I bang my door shut in your face!
Gloom and Grace and Piety,
I set my dog on such as ye!_

Finishing his stave, he continued to beat time with his heel on the
floor and to gaze upon the ceiling. But I think we could not have
twitched a finger without his noting it. M. Etienne rose and leaned
across the table toward him.

"M. Peyrot has made his fortune in Paris? Monsieur rolls in wealth, of
course?"

Peyrot shrugged his shoulders, his eyes leaving the ceiling and making a
mocking pilgrimage of the room, resting finally on his own rusty
clothing.

"Do I look it?" he answered.

"Oh," said M. Etienne, slowly, as one who digests an entirely new idea,
"I supposed monsieur must be as rich as a Lombard, he is so cold on the
subject of turning an honest penny."

Peyrot's roving eye condescended to meet his visitor's.

"Say on," he permitted lazily.

"I offer twenty pistoles for a packet, seal unbroken, taken at dawn from
the person of M. de St. Quentin's squire."

"Now you are talking sensibly," the scamp said, as if M. Etienne had
been the shuffler. "That is a fair offer and demands a fair answer.
Moreover, such zeal as you display deserves success. I will look about a
bit this morning among my friends and see if I can get wind of your
packet. I will meet you at dinner-time at the inn of the Bonne Femme."

"Dinner-time is