l's nephew.
"Without the written order I could not admit your brother of Guise. But
now you can have all the conversation you desire with M. de Mar."

Lucas's face did not change, save to scowl at the very name of his
brother Guise. He said curtly, "No, I must get back to his Grace," and,
barely bowing, went from the room.

"Now, I don't make that out," the keeper muttered in his beard. That
Lucas should be in one moment cured of his urgent need of seeing the
Comte de Mar was too much for him, but no riddle to me. I knew he had
come to stab M. Etienne in his cell. It was his last chance, and he had
missed it. I feared him no longer, for I believed in Mayenne's faith. My
master once released, Lucas could not hurt him.

What was as much to the point, the officer had no doubt of Mayenne's
good faith. He went with his paper into an inner room, where we caught
sight, through the door, of big books with a clerk or two behind them,
and in a moment appeared again with a key.

"Since the young gentleman's a count, I'll do turnkey's office myself,"
he said, his grim old battlement of a face smiling.

This was our day; from Mayenne down, everybody went out of his way to
pleasure us. I was suddenly emboldened by his manner.

"Monsieur, perhaps it is preposterous to ask, but might I go with you?"

He looked at me a moment, surprised.

"Well, after all, why not? You too, Sir Musketeer, an you like."

So the three of us, he and d'Auvray and I, went to rescue the Comte de
Mar.

We passed through corridor after corridor, row after row of heavy-barred
doors. The deeper we penetrated the mighty pile, the fonder I grew of my
friend Mayenne, by whose complaisance none of these doors would shut on
me. We climbed at last a steep turret stair winding about a huge fir
trunk, lighted by slits of windows in the four-foot wall, and at the
top turned down a dark passage to a door at the end, the bolts of which,
invisible to me in the gloom, the veteran drew back with familiar hand.

The cell was small, with one high window through which I could see
naught but the sky. For all furniture it contained a pallet, a stool, a
bench that might serve as table. M. Etienne stood at the window, his arm
crooked around the iron bars, gazing out over the roofs of Paris.

He wheeled about at the door's creaking.

"I go to trial, monsieur?" he asked quickly, not seeing me behind the
keeper.

"No, M. le Comte. The charge is cancelled. I come to set y