One evening in early April, after a long series of games, he said: "I
wish I could have brought here my secretary Carteaux. He did play to
perfection, but now, poor devil, the wound he received has palsied his
right arm, and he will never hold cards again--or, what he thinks worse,
a foil. It was a strange attack."

"Does he suffer? I have heard about him."

"Horribly. He is soon going home to see if our surgeons can find the
bullet; but he is plainly failing."

"Oh, he is going home?"

"Yes; very soon."

"How did it all happen? It has been much talked about, but one never
knows what to believe."

"I sent him to New York with despatches for our foreign office, but the
_Jean Bart_ must have sailed without them; for he was waylaid, shot, and
robbed of the papers, but lost no valuables."

"Then it was not highwaymen?"

"No; I can only conjecture who were concerned. It was plainly a robbery
in the interest of the Federalists. I do not think Mr. Randolph could
have these despatches, or if he has, they will never be heard of." Upon
this he smiled.

"Then they are lost?"

"Yes. At least to our foreign office. I think Mr. Wolcott of the
Treasury would have liked to see them."

"But why? Why Mr. Wolcott?" She showed her curiosity quite too plainly.

"Ah, that is politics, and Madame forbids them."

"Yes--usually; but this affair of Monsieur Carteaux cannot be political.
It seems to me an incredible explanation."

"Certainly a most unfortunate business," said the minister.

He had said too much and was on his guard. He had, however, set the
spinster to thinking, and remembering what Schmidt had told her of De
Courval, her reflections were fertile. "Shall we have another game?"

A month before the day on which they played, the _Jean Bart_, since
November of 1794 at sea, after seizing an English merchantman was
overhauled in the channel by the British frigate _Cerberus_ and
compelled to surrender. The captain threw overboard his lead-weighted
signal-book and the packet of Fauchet's despatches. A sailor of the
merchant ship, seeing it float, jumped overboard from a boat and rescued
it. Upon discovering its value, Captain Drew of the _Cerberus_ forwarded
the despatches to Lord Grenville in London, who in turn sent them as
valuable weapons to Mr. Hammond, the English minister in Philadelphia.
There was that in them which might discredit one earnest enemy of the
English treaty, but months went by before the papers