"I hope you'll stay here
at the Manor, no matter what comes. You're welcome. Will you?"

"Yes, I'll stay, and glad to. I can't very well do anything else. I'm
bankrupt. Haven't got a penny--of my own," he added, with daring irony.
"Besides, it's comfortable here, and I feel like one of the family; and,
anyhow, Life is short and Time is a pacer!" His wearing cough emphasised
the statement.

"It won't be easy for you in Bonaventure," said Nicolas, walking
restlessly up and down. "They're nearly all for the cause, all except
the Cure. But he can't do much now, and he'll keep out of the mess. By
the time he has a chance to preach against it, next Sunday, every man
that wants to 'll be at the front, and fighting. But you'll be all
right, I think. They like you here."

"I've a couple of good friends to see me through," was the quiet reply.

"Who are they?"

Ferrol went to his trunk, took out a pair of pistols, and balanced them
lightly in his hands. "Good to confuse twenty men," he said. "A brace of
'em are bound to drop, and they don't know which one."

He raised a pistol lazily, and looked out along its barrel through the
open, sunshiny window. Something in the pose of the body, in the curve
of the arm, struck Nicolas strangely. He moved almost in front of
Ferrol. There came back to him mechanically the remembrance of a piece
of silver on the butt of one of the highwayman's pistols!

The same piece of silver was on the butt of Ferrol's pistol. It
startled him; but he almost laughed to him self at the absurdity of the
suggestion. Ferrol was the last man in the world to play a game like
that, and with him.

Still he could not resist a temptation. He stepped in front of the
pistol, almost touching it with his forehead, looking at Ferrol as he
had looked at the highwayman last night.

"Look out, it's loaded!" said Ferrol, lowering the weapon coolly, and
not showing by sign or muscle that he understood Lavilette's meaning. "I
should think you'd had enough of pistols for one twenty-four hours."

"Do you know, Ferrol, you looked just then so like the robber last night
that, for one moment, I half thought!--And the pistol, too, looks just
the same--that silver piece on the butt!"

"Oh, yes, this piece for the name of the owner!" said Ferrol, in a
laughing brogue, and he coughed a little. "Well, maybe some one did use
this pistol last night. It wouldn't be hard to open my trunk. Let's see;
whom shall we suspect?"

La