How or where he had recovered were things that at the moment did not exercise my mind—nor have I since been at any pains to unravel the mystery of it; but there he was, and for the moment that fact was all-sufficing. What complications would come of his presence Heaven alone could foretell.

"Put an end to this play-acting!" roared the savage Marsac. "It will avail you nothing. My sister's tears may have weighed lightly with you, but you shall pay the price of them, and of the slight you have put upon her."

"My God, Marsac!" cried the other, roused to an equal fierceness. "Will you explain?"

"Aye," snarled Marsac, and his sword flashed from his scabbard, "I'll explain. As God lives, I'll explain—with this!" And he whirled his blade under the eyes of the invalid. "Come, my master, the comedy's played out. Cast aside that crutch and draw; draw, man, or, sangdieu, I'll run you through as you stand!"

There was a commotion below. The landlord and a posse of his satellites—waiters, ostlers, and stableboys—rushed between them, and sought to restrain the bloodthirsty Marsac. But he shook them off as a bull shakes off a pack of dogs, and like an angry bull, too, did he stand his ground and bellow. In a moment his sweeping sword had cleared a circle about him. In its lightning dartings hither and thither at random, it had stung a waiter in the calf, and when the fellow saw the blood staining his hose, he added to the general din his shrieks that he was murdered. Marsac swore and threatened in a breath, and a kitchen wench, from a point of vantage on the steps, called shame upon him and abused him roundly for a cowardly assassin to assail a poor sufferer who could hardly stand upright.

"Po' Cap de Dieu!" swore Castelroux at my elbow. "Saw you ever such an ado? What has chanced?"

But I never stayed to answer him. Unless I acted quickly blood would assuredly be shed. I was the one man who could explain matters, and it was a mercy for Lesperon that I should have been at hand in the hour of his meeting that fire-eater Marsac. I forgot the circumstances in which I stood to Castelroux; I forgot everything but the imminent necessity that I should intervene. Some seven feet below our window was the roof of the porch; from that to the ground it might be some eight feet more. Before my Gascon captain knew what I was about, I had swung myself down from the window on to the projecting porch. A second later, I created a diversion by landing in the midst of the courtyard fray, with the alarmed Castelroux—who imagined that I was escaping—following by the same unusual road, and shouting as he came "Monsieur de Lesperon! Hi! Monsieur de Lesperon! Mordieu! Remember your parole, Monsieur de Lesperon!"

Nothing could have been better calculated to stem Marsac's fury; nothing could have so predisposed him to lend an ear to what I had to say, for it was very evident that Castelroux's words were addressed to me, and that it was I whom he called by the name of Lesperon. In an instant I was at Marsac's side. But before I could utter a word, "What the devil does this mean?" he asked, eyeing me with fierce suspicion.

"It means, monsieur, that there are more Lesperons than one in France. I am the Lesperon who was at Lavedan. If you doubt me, ask this gentleman, who arrested me there last night. Ask him, too, why we have halted here. Ask him, if you will, to show you the letter that you left at Lavedan making an assignation here before noon to-day, which letter I received."

The suspicion faded from Marsac's eyes, and they grew round with wonder as he listened to this prodigious array of evidence. Lesperon looked on in no less amazement, yet I am sure from the manner of his glance that he did not recognize in me the man that had succoured him at Mirepoix. That, after all, was natural enough; for the minds of men in such reduced conditions as had been his upon that night are not prone to receive very clear impressions, and still less prone to retain such impressions as they do receive.

Before Marsac could answer me, Castelroux was at my side.

"A thousand apologies!" he laughed. "A fool might have guessed the errand that took you so quickly through that window, and none but a fool would have suspected you of seeking to escape. It was unworthy in me, Monsieur de Lesperon."

I turned to him while those others still stood gaping, and led him aside.

"Monsieur le Capitaine," said I, "you find it troublesome enough to reconcile your conscience with such arrests as you are charged to make, is it not so.

"Mordieu!" he cried, by way of emphatically assenting.

"Now, if you should chance to overhear words betraying to you certain people whom otherwise you would never suspect of being rebels, your soldier's duty would, nevertheless, compel you to apprehend them, would it not?"

"Why, true. I am afraid it would," he answered, with a grimace.

"But, if forewarned that by being present in a certain place you should overhear such words, what course would you pursue?"

"Avoid it like a pestilence, monsieur," he answered promptly.

"Then, Monsieur le Capitaine, may I trespass upon your generosity to beseech you to let me take these litigants to our room upstairs, and to leave us alone there for a half-hour?"

Frankness was my best friend in dealing with Castelroux—frankness and his distaste for the business they had charged him with. As for Marsac and Lesperon, they were both eager enough to have the mystery explained, and when Castelroux having consented—I invited them to my chamber, they came readily enough.

Since Monsieur de Lesperon did not recognize me, there was no reason why I should enlighten him touching my identity, and every reason why I should not. As soon as they were seated, I went to the heart of the matter at once and without preamble.

"A fortnight ago, gentlemen," said I, "I was driven by a pack of dragoons across the Garonne. I was wounded in the shoulder and very exhausted, and I knocked at the gates of Lavedan to crave shelter. That shelter, gentlemen, was afforded me, and when I had announced myself as Monsieur de Lesperon, it was all the more cordially because one Monsieur de Marsac, who was a friend of the Vicomte de Lavedan, and a partisan in the lost cause of Orleans, happened often to have spoken of a certain Monsieur de Lesperon as his very dear friend. I have no doubt, gentlemen, that you will think harshly of me because I did not enlighten the Vicomte. But there were reasons for which I trust you will not press me, since I shall find it difficult to answer you with truth."

"But is your name Lesperon?" cried Lesperon.

"That, monsieur, is a small matter. Whether my name is Lesperon or not, I confess to having practised a duplicity upon the Vicomte and his family, since I am certainly not the Lesperon whose identity I accepted. But if I accepted that identity, monsieur, I also accepted your liabilities, and so I think that you should find it in your heart to extend me some measure of forgiveness. As Rene de Lesperon, of Lesperon in Gascony, I was arrested last night at Lavedan, and, as you may observe, I am being taken to Toulouse to stand the charge of high treason. I have not demurred; I have not denied in the hour of trouble the identity that served me in my hour of need. I am taking the bitter with the sweet, and I assure you, gentlemen, that the bitter predominates in a very marked degree."

"But this must not be," cried Lesperon, rising. "I know not what use you may have made of my name, but I have no reason to think that you can have brought discredit upon it, and so—"

"I thank you, monsieur, but—"

"And so I cannot submit that you shall go to Toulouse in my stead. Where is this officer whose prisoner you are? Pray summon him, monsieur, and let us set the matter right."

"This is very generous," I answered calmly. "But I have crimes enough upon my head, and so, if the worst should befall me, I am simply atoning in one person for the errors of two."

"But that is no concern of mine!" he cried.

"It is so much your concern that if you commit so egregious a blunder as to denounce yourself, you will have ruined yourself, without materially benefitting me."

He still objected, but in this strain I argued for some time, and to such good purpose that in the end I made him realize that by betraying himself he would not save me, but only join me on the journey to the scaffold.

"Besides, gentlemen," I pursued, "my case is far from hopeless. I have every confidence that, as matters stand, by putting forth my hand at the right moment, by announcing my identity at the proper season, I can, if I am so inclined, save my neck from the headsman."

"If you are so inclined?" they both cried, their looks charged with inquiry.

"Let that be," I answered; "it does not at present concern us. What I desire you to understand, Monsieur de Lesperon, is that if I go to Toulouse alone, when the time comes to proclaim myself, and it is found that I am not Rene de Lesperon, of Lesperon in Gascony, they will assume that you are dead, and there will be no count against me.

"But if you come with me, and thereby afford proof that you are alive, my impersonation of you may cause me trouble. They may opine that I have been an abettor of treason, that I have attempted to circumvent the ends of justice, and that I may have impersonated you in order to render possible your escape. For that, you may rest assured, they will punish me.

"You will see, therefore, that my own safety rests on your passing quietly out of France and leaving the belief behind you that you are dead—a belief that will quickly spread once I shall have cast off your identity. You apprehend me?"

"Vaguely, monsieur; and perhaps you are right. What do you say, Stanislas?"

"Say?" cried the fiery Marsac. "I am weighed down with shame, my poor Rene, for having so misjudged you."

More he would have said in the same strain, but Lesperon cut him short and bade him attend to the issue now before him. They discussed it at some length, but always under the cloud in which my mysteriousness enveloped it, and, in the end, encouraged by my renewed assurances that I could best save myself if Lesperon were not taken with me, the Gascon consented to my proposals.

Marsac was on his way to Spain. His sister, he told us, awaited him at Carcassonne. Lesperon should set out with him at once, and in forty-eight hours they would be beyond the reach of the King's anger.

"I have a favour to ask of you, Monsieur de Marsac," said I, rising; for our business was at an end. "It is that if you should have an opportunity of communicating with Mademoiselle de Lavedan, you will let her know that I am not—not the Lesperon that is betrothed to your sister."

"I will inform her of it, monsieur," he answered readily; and then, of a sudden, a look of understanding and of infinite pity came into his eyes. "My God!" he cried.

"What is it, monsieur?" I asked, staggered by that sudden outcry.

"Do not ask me, monsieur, do not ask me. I had forgotten for the moment, in the excitement of all these revelations. But—" He stopped short.

"Well, monsieur?"

He seemed to ponder a moment, then looking at me again with that same compassionate glance, "You had better know," said he. "And yet—it is a difficult thing to tell you. I understand now much that I had not dreamt of. You—you have no suspicion of how you came to be arrested?"

"For my alleged participation in the late rebellion?"

"Yes, yes. But who gave the information of your whereabouts? Who told the Keeper of the Seals where you were to be found?"

"Oh, that?" I answered easily. "Why, I never doubted it. It was the coxcomb Saint-Eustache. I whipped him—"

I stopped short. There was something in Marsac's black face, something in his glance, that forced the unspoken truth upon my mind.

"Mother in heaven!" I cried. "Do you mean that it was Mademoiselle de Lavedan?"

He bowed his head in silence. Did she hate me, then, so much as that? Would nothing less than my death appease her, and had I utterly crushed the love that for a little while she had borne me, that she could bring herself to hand me over to the headsman?

God! What a stab was that! It turned me sick with grief—aye, and with some rage not against her, oh, not against her; against the fates that had brought such things to pass.

I controlled myself while their eyes were yet upon me. I went to the door and held it open for them, and they, perceiving something of my disorder, were courteous enough to omit the protracted leave-takings that under other auspices there might have been. Marsac paused a moment on the threshold as if he would have offered me some word of comfort. Then, perceiving, perhaps, how banal must be all comfort that was of words alone, and how it might but increase the anger of the wound it was meant to balm, he sighed a simple "Adieu, monsieur!" and went his way.