uited?"

"Tolerably well. Twenty gentlemen will sail with us; mostly
improvident younger sons. But what's this turmoil between our comrade
Nicot and Maitre le Borgne?" sliding his booted legs to the floor and
sitting upright.

Bouchard glanced over his shoulder. Nicot was waving his arms and
pointing to his _vis-a-vis_ at the table, while the innkeeper was
shrugging and bowing and spreading his hands.

"He leaves the table," cried Nicot, "or I leave the inn."

"But, Monsieur, there is no other place," protested the maitre; "and he
has paid in advance."

"I tell you he smells abominably of horse."

"I, Monsieur?" mildly inquired the cause of the argument. He was a
young man of twenty-three or four, with a countenance more ingenuous
than handsome, expressive of that mobility which is inseparable from a
nature buoyant and humorous.

"Thousand thunders, yes! Am I a gentleman, and a soldier, to sit with
a reeking stable-boy?"

"If I smell of the horse," said the young man, calmly helping himself
to a quarter of rabbit pie, "Monsieur smells strongly of the ass."

Whereupon a titter ran round the room. This did not serve to mollify
the anger of the irascible Nicot, whose hand went to his sword.

"Softly, softly!" warned the youth, taking up the carving knife and
jestingly testing the edge with his thumb-nail.

Some one laughed aloud.

"Monsieur Nicot, for pity's sake, remember where you are!" Maitre le
Borgne pressed back the soldier.

"Ah! it is Monsieur Nicot who has such a delicate nose?" said the youth
banteringly. "Well, Monsieur Nicot, permit me to finish this excellent
pie. I have tasted nothing half so good since I left Paris."

"Postilion!" cried Nicot, pushing Le Borgne aside.

"Monsieur," continued the youth imperturbably, "I am on the king's
service."

Several at the tables stretched their necks to observe the stranger. A
courier from the king was not an everyday event in Rochelle. De Puys
rose.

"Pah!" snorted Nicot; "you look the groom a league off. Leave the
table."

"All in good time, Monsieur. If I wear the livery of a stable-boy, it
is because I was compelled by certain industrious gentlemen of the road
to adopt it in exchange for my own. The devil! one does not ride naked
in March. They left me only my sword and papers and some pistoles
which I had previously hidden in the band of my hat. Monsieur, I find
a chair; I take it. Having ordered a pie, I eat it; in fact, I