long Laurence communed with himself, not knowing what he said
nor to what terrible adventure he was committing himself.

But Gilles de Sille of the house of the Marshal de Retz, being left to
himself in the half darkness of the garret, took up the viol and sang
a curious air like that with which the charmer wiles his snakes to
him, and at the end of every verse, he also laughed low to himself.

CHAPTER XLV

THE BOASTING OF GILLES DE SILLE

But, as fate would have it, it was not in the Hotel de Pornic nor yet
in the city of Paris that Laurence O'Halloran was destined to enter
the service of the most mighty Marshal de Retz.

Not till three days after his converse with the prisoner did Laurence
find an opportunity of escaping from the house in the street of the
Ursulines. Sholto and his father meantime kept their watch upon the
mansion of the enemy, turn and turn about; but without discovering
anything pertinent to their purpose, or giving Laurence a chance to
get clear off with Gilles de Sille. The Lord James had also frequently
adventured forth, as he declared, in order to spy out the land, though
it is somewhat sad to relate that this espionage conducted itself in
regions which gave more opportunities for investigating the peculiar
delights of Paris than of discovering the whereabouts of Maud Lindesay
and his cousin, the Fair Maid of Galloway.

The head of Gilles de Sille was still swathed in bandages when, with
an additional swaddling of disguise across his eyes, he and Laurence,
that truant scion of the house of O'Halloran, stole out into the
night. A frosty chill had descended with the darkness, and a pale,
dank mist from the marshes of the Seine made the pair shiver as arm in
arm they ventured carefully forth.

Laurence was doing a foolish, even a wicked, thing in thus, without
warning, deserting his companions. But he was just at the age when it
is the habit of youth to deceive themselves with the thought that a
shred of good intent covers a world of heedless folly.

The fugitives found the Hotel de Pornic practically deserted. They
approached it cautiously from the back, lest they should run into the
arms of any of the numerous enemies of its terrible lord, who, though
not abhorred in Paris as in most other places which he favoured with
his visits, had yet little love spent upon him even there.

The custodian in the stone cell by the gate came yawning out to the
bars at the sound of Gilles de Sil