my intention was to ask jean volran for an empty room in which to examine the king's letter, and at the foot of the stair i found him waiting. but it was not the jean volran i had known for a night and morning. the obsequious smile, the almost servile cringing, were no longer there; there was no deferential welcome for the great, no fawning upon the happy man who bore the king's letter and was the king's will in the flesh.

then, had i said, set la voulle ablaze and thrust your hand into the fire, le roy le veult, he would have done it and made no protest. now his back was as straight as my own, his mien as distant, his eye as supercilious. he eyen outstared me, as if he were gaspard hellewyl and i jean volran.

"you have kept me waiting, monsieur," said he, pushing a door open and leading the way into just such a room as i desired.

"i? i have kept you waiting? what insolence is this?"

"tut, tut!" he retorted, turning his back on me while he closed the door carefully. "did you really think that for such a post as this his majesty had chosen a man with no better brains than to fill wine pots for fools to empty? you have not only kept me waiting, but, what is worse, you have wasted your time with your dilly-dallying, and made the king to wait also. i would have had what was wanted here inside of a week. why the king chose to employ you at all is a mystery, unless it was that if his plan miscarried it would please him better to see a flanders man hang for it. the king did not send you to morsigny to gather roses," he went on with a sneer and a nod at the flower i carried buckled to my bonnet, "but i guessed the message i brought you yesterday would put another thought than girls and girls' love tokens into your head."

"you? none but goatherds passed morsigny yesterday."

"and i was one of them, as i have been many things in his majesty's service. now, monsieur, the king's letter, if you please."

but there i had him at a disadvantage, and was in no mood to abate a jot of it.

"be what you like, goatherd, scullion, tapster," i answered, with as brusque an incivility as his own, "that is between you and the king, and no odds to me, but the letter is my affair."

"why, man," he cried, too astounded at my opposition to take offence, "don't you know you are but a catspaw, and i am here to finish the affair? come, come, you have cackled your little crow over me, and we are quits—the letter, and waste no time."

"even allowing for the goatherd and scullion," i answered, "i take you for a kind of a gentleman, and so do not say you lie, only, i heard nothing of this at plessis. on the contrary, his majesty was quite clear, that which i began i was to finish. show me your warrant, but i warn you, nothing less than the king's signet and sign manual will move me."

for a moment he stood clenching and unclenching his hands before him, too full of passion to find words. had he not been in his innkeeper's dress, and so without a sword, he would have tried force, so mad with rage was he. then he turned aside to the window, and stared between the bars into the court where martin was rubbing down roland.

"you play your game with a high hand, monsieur," he said at last; "but if you think i have sweated here in the grime all these weeks while you were feasting at morsigny, just to see you pocket the profits, you don't know your man."

but when, with another turn of his heel, he would have stridden past me, i stepped between him and the door.

"monsieur, who shall pay you your wages i do not know, but you are not coming back to stab me unawares and rob me of what the king has committed to my trust. since you have brought me here to this room, in this room you shall stay until i have read his majesty's letter. nor do i see why we should quarrel. if the end of this affair has indeed been committed to you, show me some token? god knows i have no love for the work. you have no token? no warrant? nothing but your bare word? then, since you profess to know so much, tell me at least what steps i am next to take, something, anything to prove you are in the king's confidence, and that your bare word is not a bare lie? you cannot? then tell me this: if you were gaspard hellewyl, and i you, how far would you trust the man who came with nothing but a blustering wheedle of words in his mouth? not a foot! not an inch! nor will i. it is my life, monsieur tapster-goatherd, it is my honour, and by god! i'll give neither the one nor the other to your keeping. stand there by the window, monsieur, and if the king bids me give you the letter, or—or anything else i control except these two, then, on the faith of a gentleman, you shall have it, but not unless."

three times while i spoke i saw no! in his face, though he answered nothing; but as i ended, he half laughed, shrugged his shoulders, and did as he was bidden with a swagger that matched his clothing badly. who he was, or what his rank, i never knew, but clothes so much make the man that not even the prince de talmont himself would in like circumstances have looked anything else than that very ridiculous object—a country inn-keeper in a rage.

partly to gain time for thought, but partly, i confess, that his helplessness might gall him deeper, i played with the king's letter, examining silk, seal, and superscription as if all were strange, instead of as familiar as the bottom of my own pocket. the situation was growing clearer to me with every passing minute, and it will have been noticed that i do not think rapidly.

no doubt the fellow glowering at me from the window shutter was not alone in la voulle; no doubt, too, his ten-crowns-a-month-cut-throats would be this, that, or the other about the inn—groom, drawer, even cook. three or four of these there might be, but not more. where there is a secret, there is no safety in numbers. against these i had only martin, unless, indeed, i played the bold game of raising la voulle to defend its young count, and as a climax carried him off myself! my scheme would have to be recast, which was a pity; its very simplicity had guaranteed success. but the nature and extent of the change must depend on the king's wishes, so with a smiling nod of encouragement in patience to my host at the window, i broke the seal.

either the crackle of the paper or the polite impertinence roused him. setting his foot against the angle of the wall, he stiffened himself for a spring. once he had me on my back, circumstances would lead him. if his own fellows came in just then, there was an end to gaspard hellewyl; if la voulle heard the scuffle, he would cry treachery! and trust for justification to the king's letter found in my hands. but i saw the move, and hitched the handle of my sword forward a foot. it was a parry to his thrust, and back he lounged again against the shutters.

tearing the outer wrappings to small pieces, i scattered them on the floor. the next sheet was a blank, nor, though i held it up to the light, could i trace a mark of any kind. not so the third sheet, for eight or ten words were sprawled across it in short sentences. but at the first line the exultation of triumph over my enemy by the window fell cold and flat; the letter was in latin, and never a word of latin had i learned in my five-and-twenty years of life.

latin! why the plague latin? no doubt it was part of the old plessis fox's scheme for hiding his identity. neither jacob's voice nor esau's hand must show the truth, though the supplanter and the ishmaelite, he whose hand was against every man's, joined in him their cunning. suppose the letter was seized upon me, what then? outside the seal was commines', the writing commines'. inside was a tag of monkish latin scrawled as if an earwig had scratched its tail across the paper; who could connect either with louis in plessis if louis chose to say no! with a sneer, and let navarre's vengeance on the man who carried the letter pass unrequited? no one; and let it so pass he would, if, indeed, his virtuous indignation did not itself call aloud for vengeance. louis had no mercy on failures.

but latin! why the plague latin? then i began to see. the cover once destroyed, latin might come from spain, from the empire, from england—anywhere! and behind it france lay hidden in safety. more than that, and at the thought i ground my teeth, it was perhaps a tongue that brute grinning from the window at my perplexity could translate. if so, it was his turn to smile, and as i met his eye there was little of politeness in his ridicule. no doubt dismay was stamped across my face easier to be read than the words on the paper, and my need was his opportunity.

not to give him the satisfaction of sarcastically offering his services, i spoke first.

"do you read latin, monsieur?"

"latin?" he returned, a scowl wrinkling his face. "what new nonsense is this?" then an inspiration broke upon him, and he came briskly forward, his hand outstretched. "ah! now i understand. you wish me to translate the king's letter? certainly, monsieur, certainly."

but tapping my sword hilt, i motioned him off. "keep your distance, my good fellow. the writing is large enough to be read from where you are."

reversing the paper, so that the light fell full upon it, i watched his face, and if ever a man was blankly puzzled it was my friend the goatherd-tapster. that he was as innocent of latin as myself i guessed, but with the king's tools as with himself it was not wise to assume overmuch. what he had hoped was that i would put the letter into his hands, and once there he would have risked his skin to keep it.

"well?"

"it is difficult," said he, playing to gain time. "i wonder why his maj——ah! ah! ah! i begin to see. a man grows rusty in his learning; you find it so, do you not? but now i have it; yes, yes, just what i expected. you know no latin, monsieur de helville?"

"not a word. french and flemish, nothing more."

from the paper he glanced up at me cunningly, his eyes narrowed, but with a malicious smile peeping through the lids, then back to the paper. out went a forefinger, and nodding his head he passed from letter to letter, picking out the words as a child might spell his way through a hornbook. this he did twice, till, thinking he wanted to commit them to memory, i snatched the paper away.

"if you can translate, translate and have done with it."

"but i wish to have it exact," he protested. "well, then, here it is," and again there was the cunning upward glance. "'that which you have brought give to him who waits; return then whence you came until the king writes a third time.' it is as plain as day, now that i have mastered the translation. i am he who waits; so now, monsieur, give it to me and let me go."

before he spoke i knew he was playing with me, and had no more latinity in him than i had. for whatever quality the king had chosen him, it was not for that of a good liar. but the splendid audacity of the lie filled me with admiration, and that i might draw him to a greater fall i led him on a little.

"but what are your orders, or have you, too, a letter?"

"that," he answered, with just such a little smiling nod as i had given him, "is my affair, and between me and the king. your own words! come, monsieur, give it to me, and let me go."

"it!" said i banteringly, for i was fool enough to play him further. "is your latin not rusty? and if it is rusty, may it not be wrong? should your 'it' not be 'him'?"

"him?" he repeated. "him? what do you mean? by god! i have it! it's the boy upstairs—it's the little count himself! monsieur, monsieur, you fly at high game, and i offer you my apologies; in some things you are not such a fool as i took you to be. to lead him like a pet lamb with a ribbon, and into his own town, too! no violence, no noise, nothing indiscreet! monsieur, i could not have done as well myself. can a man say more?"

"but the latin?" said i. "what of the it, master scholar?"

"who said it? not i. that which you have brought, was what i said; that, that, not it, and that is the count de foix!"

"and i am to return whence i came?"

"so it seems, monsieur, and i wish you joy when they find the boy does not return with you. i fear they'll hang you, faith of a gentleman! i fear they will."

"stop a minute, i'm not there yet. i was to wait the king's third letter, was i not?"

"yes, yes," he said impatiently. "you have had two already, and so the next must be the third—any fool can see that!"

"just so, dear monsieur volran; and it was a fool who saw it. since when was his majesty among the prophets? yesterday the second letter came, came because the king was kept waiting, and yet this, written two months ago, foresaw it, and so the next will be the third. how, two months ago, could the king know, there would be need for a second and so promise a third? my compliments on your imagination, but you do not lie well."

"lie, monsieur, lie?"

"bah! never bluster with your sheath empty; bare hands cannot bully hard steel. god forgive us! but we all lie at times. i did awhile back when i said i knew no latin. i know one tag—a worthy monk taught it to me a month ago, when, out hawking, the kite missed its stoop. how is this it ran? laqueo—let me see; laqueo venantium—ah! i forget. like you, i am rusty. but i remember its meaning. shall i translate, monsieur scholar-tapster? it has something to do with an escape from the snare of the fowler."

"oh," he cried, stamping, "you shall pay for this!"

with my hand upon the door i turned upon him.

"dare so much as lift a finger, dare so much as breathe a threat, and king's man though you are, bound up in the same bundle as me though you are, you'll find the morsigny gallows waiting for you here at la voulle; nor will louis say more than, curse him for a blundering ass! it is i who hold the king's orders, not you; cross me in my obedience at your peril!" and passing out, i struck the door noisily with the letter.

the crackle of the paper was a louder voiced threat than my own, and as such the man i left swearing behind me understood it.