n to
one of his followers, as he dismounted, "Do you ride on," he said, "and
stand guard that we be not surprised. And do you, Perrot, tell Monsieur.
Perrot here, as God wills it," he added, with the faint smile which did
not escape the minister's eye, "married his wife from the great inn at La
Fleche, and he knows the place."

"None better," the man growled. He was a sullen, brooding knave, whose
eyes when he looked up surprised by their savage fire.

La Tribe shook his head. "I know it, too," he said. "'Tis strong as a
fortress, with a walled court, and all the windows look inwards. The
gates are closed an hour after sunset, no matter who is without. If you
think, M. de Tignonville, to take him there--"

"Patience, Monsieur, you have not heard me," Perrot interposed. "I know
it after another fashion. Do you remember a rill of water which runs
through the great yard and the stables?"

La Tribe nodded.

"Grated with iron at either end and no passage for so much as a dog? You
do? Well, Monsieur, I have hunted rats there, and where the water passes
under the wall is a culvert, a man's height in length. In it is a stone,
one of those which frame the grating at the entrance, which a strong man
can remove--and the man is in!"

"Ay, in! But where?" La Tribe asked, his eyebrows drawn together.

"Well said, Monsieur, where?" Perrot rejoined in a tone of triumph.
"There lies the point. In the stables, where will be sleeping men, and a
snorer on every truss? No, but in a fairway between two stables where
the water at its entrance runs clear in a stone channel; a channel
deepened in one place that they may draw for the chambers above with a
rope and a bucket. The rooms above are the best in the house, four in
one row, opening all on the gallery; which was uncovered, in the common
fashion until Queen-Mother Jezebel, passing that way to Nantes, two years
back, found the chambers draughty; and that end of the gallery was closed
in against her return. Now, Monsieur, he and his Madame will lie there;
and he will feel safe, for there is but one way to those four
rooms--through the door which shuts off the covered gallery from the open
part. But--" he glanced up an instant and La Tribe caught the
smouldering fire in his eyes--"we shall not go in by the door."

"The bucket rises through a trap?"

"In the gallery? To be sure, monsieur. In the corner beyond the fourth
door. There shall he fall into the pit whic