atiently, still pressing on. 'Are you
highwaymen, that you stop the way?'

The speaker on the other side looked at me keenly, but in a moment
retorted, 'Enough trifling, sir! Who YOU are I do not know. But the
person riding at your rein is M. de Rosny. Him I do know, and I warn him
to stop.'

I thought the game was lost, but to my surprise my companion answered
at once and almost in the same words I had used. 'Well, sir, and what of
that?' he said.

'What of that?' the stranger exclaimed, spurring his horse so as still
to bar the way. 'Why, only this, that you must be a madman to show
yourself on this side of the Loire.'

'It is long since I have seen the other,' was my companion's unmoved
answer.

'You are M. de Rosny? You do not deny it?' the man cried in
astonishment.

'Certainly I do not deny it,' M. de Rosny answered bluntly. 'And more,
the day has been, sir,' he continued with sudden fire, 'when few at his
Majesty's Court would have dared to chop words with Solomon de Bethune,
much less to stop him on the highway within a mile of the palace. But
times are changed with me, sir, and it would seem with others also, if
true men rallying to his Majesty in his need are to be challenged by
every passer on the road.'

'What! Are you Solomon de Bethune?' the man cried incredulously.
Incredulously, but his countenance fell, and his voice was full of
chagrin and disappointment,

'Who else, sir?' M. de Rosny replied haughtily. 'I am, and, as far as I
know, I have as much right on this side of the Loire as any other man.'

'A thousand pardons.'

'If you are not satisfied--'

'Nay, M. de Rosny, I am perfectly satisfied.'

The stranger repented this with a very crestfallen air, adding, 'A
thousand pardons'; and fell to making other apologies, doffing his hat
with great respect. 'I took you, if you will pardon me saying so, for
your Huguenot brother, M. Maximilian,' he explained. 'The saying goes
that he is at Rosny.'

'I can answer for that being false,' M. de Rosny answered peremptorily,
'for I have just come from there, and I will answer for it he is not
within ten leagues of the place. And now, sir, as we desire to enter
before the gates shut, perhaps you will excuse us.' With which he bowed,
and I bowed, and they bowed, and we separated. They gave us the road,
which M. de Rosny took with a great air, and we trotted to the gate, and
passed through it without misadventure.

The first street we entered was a