but presently thought better of
it, and after a pause--

"Ay, she too!" he said. "Why not? As we have played the game--for
her--so, though we lose, we will play it to the end; nor because we lose
throw down the cards! Besides, man, die in the corner, die biting, and
he dies too!"

"And why not?" Bigot asked, rising in a fury. "Why not? Whose work is
it we lie here, snared by these clowns of fisherfolk? Who led us wrong
and betrayed us? He die? Would the devil had taken him a year ago!
Would he were within my reach now! I would kill him with my bare
fingers! He die? And why not?"

"Why, because, fool, his death would not save me!" Count Hannibal
answered coolly. "If it would, he would die! But it will not; and we
must even do again as we have done. I have spared him--he's a
white-livered hound!--both once and twice, and we must go to the end with
it since no better can be! I have thought it out, and it must be. Only
see you, old dog, that I have the dagger hid in the splint where I can
reach it. And then, when the exchange has been made, and my lady has her
silk glove again--to put in her bosom!"--with a grimace and a sudden
reddening of his harsh features--"if master priest come within reach of
my arm, I'll send him before me, where I go."

"Ay, ay!" said Badelon. "And if you fail of your stroke I will not fail
of mine! I shall be there, and I will see to it he goes! I shall be
there!"

"You?"

"Ay, why not?" the old man answered quietly. "I may halt on this leg for
aught I know, and come to starve on crutches like old Claude Boiteux who
was at the taking of Milan and now begs in the passage under the
Chatelet."

"Bah, man, you will get a new lord!"

Badelon nodded. "Ay, a new lord with new ways!" he answered slowly and
thoughtfully. "And I am tired. They are of another sort, lords now,
than they were when I was young. It was a word and a blow then. Now I
am old, with most it is--'Old hog, your distance! You scent my lady!'
Then they rode, and hunted, and tilted year in and year out, and summer
or winter heard the lark sing. Now they are curled, and paint
themselves, and lie in silk and toy with ladies--who shamed to be seen at
Court or board when I was a boy--and love better to hear the mouse squeak
than the lark sing."

"Still, if I give you my gold chain," Count Hannibal answered quietly,
"'twill keep you from that."

"Give it to Bigot," the old man answered. The splint he w