ame? How call you that? Was that, perhaps, not
cheating?"

"No, monsieur, it was not," I answered quietly. "It was in the terms of
your challenge that I was free to go to Lavedan in what guise I listed,
employing what wiles I pleased. But let that be," I ended, and, creasing
the paper, I poured the sand back into the box, and dusted the document.
"The point is hardly worth discussing at this time of day. If not one
way, why, then, in another, your wager is lost."

"Is it?" He set his arms akimbo and eyed me derisively, his thick-set
frame planted squarely before me. "You are satisfied that it is so?
Quite satisfied, eh?" He leered in my face. "Why, then, Monsieur le
Marquis, we will see whether a few inches of steel will win it back for
me." And once more his hand flew to his hilt.

Rising, I flung the document I had accomplished upon the table. "Glance
first at that," said I.

He stopped to look at me in inquiry, my manner sowing so great a
curiosity in him that his passion was all scattered before it. Then
he stepped up to the table and lifted the paper. As he read, his hand
shook, amazement dilated his eyes and furrowed his brow.

"What--what does it signify?" he gasped.

"It signifies that, although fully conscious of having won, I prefer
to acknowledge that I have lost. I make over to you thus my estates of
Bardelys, because, monsieur, I have come to realize that that wager was
an infamous one--one in which a gentleman should have had no part--and
the only atonement I can make to myself, my honour, and the lady whom we
insulted--is that."

"I do not understand," he complained.

"I apprehend your difficulty, Comte. The point is a nice one. But
understand at least that my Picardy estates are yours. Only, monsieur,
you will be well advised to make your will forthwith, for you are not
destined, yourself, to enjoy them."

He looked at me, his glance charged with inquiry.

"His Majesty," I continued, in answer to his glance, "is ordering your
arrest for betraying the trust he had reposed in you and for perverting
the ends of justice to do your own private murdering."

"Mon Dieu!" he cried, falling of a sudden unto a most pitiful affright.
"The King knows?"

"Knows?" I laughed. "In the excitement of these other matters you have
forgotten to ask how I come to be at liberty. I have been to the King,
monsieur, and I have told him what has taken place here at Toulouse, and
how I was to have gone to the block to