In the meanwhile the cabaret up the road was doing a roaring trade. A goodly number of revellers, not satisfied with the excitement of the afternoon, had turned in there for a drink and a gossip. There was such a lot to talk about, and the company quickly formed itself into groups round separate tables, some talking over one thing, some another. Jacques the butcher's boy was there; he was baited for having allowed his partner, the aristo, to be taken from him by the citizen doctor.

"He was handsomer than you, Jacques," he was told; "that's what it was."

And Jacques, full of vanity, as many undersized boys and girls often are, declared most emphatically that he would bring the aristo to her knees, and that within the next three days.

"How wilt thou do that, thou ugly young moke?" he was asked, all in good humour.

"I shall make her marry me," he replied, puffing out his chest like a small turkey-cock.

Laughter all round, then some one queried:

"Thou'll make love to the aristo?"

"I will."

"And ask her in marriage?"

"Yes!"

"And if she says 'No!'"

"If she does, I'll warn her that I will go straight to the Chief Commissary and denounce her and her family as traitors, which will mean the guillotine for the lot of them. So what now?" he concluded with a ludicrous air of triumph.

"A splendid idea, Jacques," a lusty voice cried gaily, and a none-too-gentle hand gave the boy a vigorous slap on the back. "And we'll play a march at thy wedding."

It was the fiddler who had just come in with the other musicians. It seems they had accompanied the bulk of the crowd part of the way down to Choisy, and then felt woefully thirsty, and came to the "Chien sans Queue," which was so much nearer for a drink than the first cabaret down the other way. They certainly looked very weary, very grubby and very dry, which was small wonder, seeing that they had been on the go, marching with the crowd and blowing their trumpets, since before noon. Apparently, poor things, they had no money for though they professed to have mouths as dry as lime-kilns, they did not order drinks, but took their stand in a corner of the room and proceeded to tune up their instruments, which means that they made the kind of noise one usually associates in concert halls with tuning up, but when they had finished the process and started to play what might be called a tune, the sounds which their instruments emitted had no relation whatever to correct harmony. They seemed, however, to please the unsophisticated ears of the audience, or else, perhaps, the mood for song and gaiety had not yet passed away altogether; certain it is that when the ever-popular "Il était une bergère," was struck up, the chorus was taken up with the former gusto and there was much clapping of hands and banging of tin mugs on the tables. But when the woes of the shepherdess and her cat had been proclaimed in song from beginning to end once, twice and three times and the musicians, more weary and thirsty than ever, deputed their fiddler to go round and hold out his phrygian cap in a mute appeal for sous wherewith to pay for drinks, the whole crowd suddenly discovered that it was getting late and that wives and mothers were waiting for them at home. And there was a chorus something like this:

"Who would have thought it was supper-time?"

"And such a dark night, too."

"If I don't get home, my old woman will be as cross as a she-cat."

"Art thou coming my way, Henri?"

And one by one, or in groups of threes and fours they all filed out of the "Chien sans Queue." Only six sous had been thrown into the Phrygian cap. Polycarpe the landlord stood at his own front door for some time exchanging a few last words with his departing customers. His wife, the Junoesque Victoria, was clearing away the empty mugs in the taproom. The fiddler put his long arm round her capacious waist and drew her, giggling and smirking, on his knee. She smacked his face with elephantine playfulness.

"You couldn't run about with me on your shoulder," she said, "as you did with that poor little man this afternoon."

"He was just a dirty spy," the fiddler retorted, "but if you will challenge me, my Juno, I will have a try with you also."

"Take me upstairs, then, to my room," she said, with a simper. "I am dog-tired after all that dancing and Polycarpe can finish clearing away."

"What will you give me if I do?"

"Free drinks, my beauty," she replied, and pinched his cheeks with her plump fingers, "if you do not drop me on the way."

To her great amazement and no less to her delight the fiddler did heave her up, not as if she were a feather or even a bale of goods certainly, but he did hold her in his arms and carry her not only to the door, but up the narrow staircase, whence she directed him to her bedroom, where she demanded to be deposited on the bed, which gave a loud creak under her goodly weight. She laughed when she saw him give a loud puff of exhaustion.

"I weigh a hundred kilos," she said with some pride.

"I am sure you do," he was willing to admit. But at the provocative glance which the bouncing lady now threw him he took incontinently to his heels. As he was going down the stairs he heard her shouting to her husband.

"Polycarpe! He carried me all the way upstairs in his arms. There's a man for you!"

Polycarpe was standing at the foot of the stairs. His face wore an expression of comical amazement. He was small and spare, had a head as bald as an egg, and tired, purple-rimmed eyes.

"Give the musicians free drinks all round," the lady commanded.

Thus it was that presently five tired musicians were seated round one of the tables in a corner of the taproom of the cabaret "Le Chien sans Queue." With them was Citizen Polycarpe the landlord who, for the moment, was sprawling across the table, his head buried in his arms and snoring like a grampus. The fiddler bent over him, turned his head over and with delicate, if very grimy finger, lifted the lid of one of his eyes.

"As drunk as a lord," he declared; "that stuff is very potent."

He had a smallish bottle in his hand which he now slipped back into his pocket.

"And the gargantuan lady upstairs," he went on, "is sleeping the sleep of the just. So as soon as Devinne is here we can get on with business."

"He is here," one of the others said, "I am sure I heard his footsteps outside."

He rose and went to the door, called out softly into the night: "Devinne! All serene!"

A minute or two later St. John Devinne came in. He was dressed in ordinary clothes, had clean face and hands, but though normally he would not by his appearance have attracted any attention, here in this squalid tap-room in the midst of his friends all grimy and clad in nothing but rags, he looked strangely conspicuous and, as it were, out of key. A pair of lazy eyes, slightly sarcastic in expression, looked him up and down. Devinne caught the glance and something of a blush mounted to his cheeks, nor did he after that meet the eyes of his chief. He took his seat at the table, edging away as far as he could from the sprawling form of Polycarpe the landlord.

"May I know what has happened this afternoon?" he asked curtly.

"Of course you may, my dear fellow," Blakeney replied. "Here," he added, and pushed a mug and jug of wine nearer to St. John, "have a drink."

"No, thanks."

Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, that young dandy, was busy polishing a tin trumpet. He looked up from his work, glanced up at the chief who gave him a slight nod, whereupon he proceeded to give a short succinct account of the stirring events at the château.

"I thought something of the sort was in the wind," Devinne said with dry sarcasm, "or I should not have been sent up to Paris on that futile errand."

There was complete silence for a moment or two after that. Lord Tony's fist clenched until the knuckles shown smooth and white. Glynde was seen to swallow hard as if to choke words that had risen to his throat. They all looked up at their chief who had not moved a muscle, had not even frowned. Now he gave a light little laugh.

"Do have a drink, Johnny," he said; "it will do you good."

Sir Andrew blew a subdued blast in his tin trumpet and Tony, Glynde and Hastings only swore under their breath. But the tension was eased for the moment, and Blakeney presently resumed:

"The errand, lad," he rejoined simply, "was not futile. One of us had to let Galveston and Holte know that they will have to meet us at headquarters on the St. Gif-Le Perrey Road any time within the next twenty-four hours. You would have been wiser, I think, for their sakes as well as your own, to have assumed some inconspicuous disguise, but you have got through all right, I take it, so we won't say any more about that."

"Yes! I got through all right," Devinne mumbled sulkily. "I am not a fool."

"I am sure you are not, dear lad," Blakeney responded still very quietly, though to any one who knew him as intimately as did Sir Andrew Ffoulkes or Lord Tony, there was just a soupçon of hardness now in the tone of his usually pleasant voice. "You were spared, at any rate, the painful sight of seeing your friends up at La Rodière baited by that unruly crowd."

"Yes! Damn them!"

"And then you know, Johnny, you are nothing of a musician really. Now you should have heard Ffoulkes on his trumpet, or Hastings who played second fiddle; they were demmed marvellous, I tell you. If I were not afraid of waking my Juno upstairs, I would give you a specimen of our performance, right up to the time when our friend Monsieur Chambertin appeared upon the scene."

"By the way," Lord Tony now put in, "what did you do ultimately with that worthy man?"

"I locked him and his sergeant up in the cellar. It won't hurt them to starve for a bit. We'll arrange for them to be let out as soon as we feel that they cannot do us any harm."

"I suppose I shall be told off to do that," Devinne muttered peevishly.

"That's an idea, Johnny," Blakeney responded with imperturbable good humour. "Splendid! But cheer up, lad. We have splendid work before us. When dawn breaks over the hills yonder, we will be out for sport which is fit for the gods. Sport which you all love. Break-neck rides across country, with those poor innocents to save from the wolves who will be howling at us close to our heels. By gad! you will all feel like gods yourselves. You will have lived, all of you. Lived, I tell you! My God! I thank Thee for the chance! That is what you will say."

As the ringing voice of the light-hearted adventurer resounded against the rafters of the old tap-room, landlord Polycarpe raised his head for a moment, looked around him with bleary eyes, then dropped his head down again and emitted a thunderous snore. They all laughed like so many schoolboys, the atmosphere became, as it were, surcharged with the spirits of these young dare-devils, ready to hazard their lives in the pursuit of what Blakeney had called a sport fit for the gods. And so magnetic was the personality of their leader, the greatest and most selfless knight-errant that ever graced the pages of history, that even Devinne the rebellious felt its power and listened spell-bound to the stirring projects of his chief.

Sir Percy now stood in his favourite attitude leaning against the wall, facing the five glowing pairs of eyes, his own fixed on something that he alone saw, something beyond these four squalid walls, the open country perhaps, the break-neck ride that lay ahead of him and his followers, or was it the flower-garden of Richmond, the banks of the Thames, the blue eyes of Marguerite calling to him, asking him to come back to her arms? He threw up his head and laughed. Yes! his adored wife was calling to him even now, but so were those innocents up at the château, three women, an old man, up at La Rodière, and there were others, too, children! God in heaven! One couldn't allow children, women, old men to be butchered without doing what one could do to help them. Marguerite, my beloved, you must wait! I will come back to you, all in good time, when I have done the work which destiny, or was it God Himself? has mapped out for me.

"You remember," he began after a few moments during which he seemed to be collecting his thoughts, "that there came a time when I allowed the crowd to get ahead of me and I remained behind ostensibly to put a new string on my fiddle. I hid in the dense shrubbery just inside the gates, and after a few minutes, five, perhaps I heard the welcome voice of our dear Monsieur Chauvelin. He gave that egregious agitator Conty the go-by, then he called to a soldier who had evidently been waiting for him, and gave him instructions for his well-conceived damnable plot which embraced the arrest of the whole La Rodière family and their two faithful servants, as well as the capture of mine humble self. I could hear every word he said. I learned that a squad of gendarmerie, thirty in number, was posted in the stables, and that at a certain signal given by my engaging friend, the men were to make their way up to the château and there to await further orders. As soon as this pair of blackguards had parted company, Chauvelin to go straight to the château, and the sergeant to transmit his orders, I slipped out of the gate and came on here.

"Worthy landlord Polycarpe is, of course, an old friend of ours. The place was deserted for the moment. I got him to open a couple of jorums of wine, into which I poured a good measure of this potent stuff, which that splendid fellow Barstow of York gave me recently. Look at old Polycarpe. You can see what a wonderful sleep it induces. With a jorum in each hand, my fiddle and a bunch of mugs, slung over my shoulder, I made my way to the stables, where, as you may well suppose, I was made extremely welcome. I stayed just long enough to see the wine poured out and handed round, then out I slipped, locking the stable and coach-house doors after me. Then back I went to join the merry throng in the château. The rest you know, and so much for the past. Now for the future. Give me some of this abominable vinegar to drink and I'll go on."

One of them poured out the wine, another handed him the mug. He drank it down and did not even make a wry face. Probably he had not the slightest notion what landlord Polycarpe's thin local wine tasted like. Anyway, he did go on.

"Just before dawn we'll go up to La Rodière. I have the key of the stables in my pocket, and I want to give those nice soldiers another drink. That will keep them quiet till far into the morning. By that time we shall be well away. We'll divest some of them of their accoutrements, which will save us the trouble of going all the way to headquarters to get our own. I have thought the matter well over and, as I said this morning, I am quite positive that in this part of the country, and far from a large city, a mock arrest is by far our best plan. Fortune has favoured us, let me tell you, for there is a coach and a pair here in the yard. I learned this also while I was eavesdropping. It was designed to accommodate the five prisoners. Now it will serve the same purpose for us with two of us on the box and the others freezing on the top, for it will be cold, I tell you. As soon we have effected the arrest, we'll make for the St. Gif-Le Perrey road. At St. Gif, Galveston and Holte will be at our usual quarters, ready with fresh horses to continue the journey to the coast."

"Then we don't start till dawn?" one of them asked.

"Just before dawn. The night will, I am afraid, be very dark, except at rare intervals, for there is a heavy bank of clouds coming over the mountains. We want the light, as we shall have to drive like the devil until well past Le Perrey.

"And we make for the coast?"

"For that little hole Trouville, this side of the Loire. You remember it Ffoulkes? But we'll talk all that over before I leave you."

"You are not coming all the way?"

"No, only as far as St. Gif. Directly I have seen you all safely on the road I shall have to turn my attention to one other prisoner, and that will be a difficult task. I don't mean that it will be so materially, but Pradel, I feel, will be obstinate. He has his hospital here, and his poor patients. How am I going to persuade him that anyhow when those murderers have done away with him, his hospital and his poor patients will still have to exist somehow?"

While the chief spoke and the others hung as usual breathless on his lips, Devinne's expression of face became more and more glowering. A dark frown deepened between his eyes. Once or twice he tried to speak, but it was not until Blakeney paused that he suddenly banged his fist on the table.

"Pradel?" he cried. "What the devil do you mean?"

"Just what I said, my dear fellow," Sir Percy replied, with just the slightest possible lifting of his eyebrows. "The others understood. Why not you?"

"The others? The others? I don't care about the others. All I know is that that insolent brute Pradel-"

Up went Blakeney's slender, commanding hand.

"Do not call that man a brute, my lad. He is a fine fellow, and his life is in immediate danger, though he does not know it. He has a bitter and very influential enemy in the lawyer Maurin, who has put up a trumpery charge against him. I learned as lately as last night that his arrest has been finally decided on by the Chief Commissary and is only a matter of a couple of days, till enough false evidence, I suppose, has been collected against him."

"Well! and why not?" Devinne retorted hotly.

"There is no time to go into that now, my dear fellow," Blakeney replied with unruffled patience.

"Why not?"

At sound of this curt challenge to their chief, at the defiant tone of the boy's voice, the others lost all patience, and there was a chorus which should have been a warning to Devinne, that though Blakeney himself was as usual extraordinarily patient and understanding, they in a body, Ffoulkes, Tony, Hastings, Glynde, would not tolerate effrontery, let alone insubordination.

"You young cub!"

"Insolent worm! Wait till you feel my glove on your face."

"By gad! I'll wring his neck!" were some of the threats and epithets they hurled at Devinne. But the latter was now in one of those obstinate moods that opposition soon turns into open revolt, and this, in spite of the fact that Percy now put a firm, but still friendly, hand on his shoulder.

"If I didn't know, lad, what is at the back of your mind," he said gently, "I might remind you once again that you promised me obedience, just like the others, in all matters connected with our League. We should never accomplish the good work which we have all of us undertaken if there was mutiny in our small camp."

Devinne shook the kindly hand off his shoulder.

"Oh! you'll never understand," he muttered glumly.

"What? That you are in love with Cécile de la Rodière and jealous of Simon Pradel?"

"Don't talk of love, Blakeney. You don't know what it means."

A slight pause. Only a second or two, while a curious shadow seemed to flit over those deep-set eyes that held such a wealth of suppressed emotion in their glance, of sorrow and of doubt and of visions of ecstasy that mayhap the daring adventurer would never taste again. He gave a quick sigh and said simply:

"Perhaps not, dear lad. You may be right. But we are not here to discuss matters of sentiment, and the knife which I am now about to wield will cut into your wounded vanity, and, I fear me, will hurt terribly. Cécile de la Rodière," he went on, and now his tone was very firm and he spoke very slowly, letting every word sink into the boy's consciousness, "is not and never will be in love with you. She is half in love with Pradel already-"

Devinne jumped to his feet.

"And that's a lie-" he cried hoarsely, and would have said more only that Glynde struck him full on the mouth.

The others, too, were beside themselves with fury. They laid rough hands on his shoulders. Lord Tony flung an insult in his face, and Hastings called out:

"On your knees, you-"

Blakeney alone remained quite undisturbed. He only spoke when Hastings and Tony between them had nearly forced Devinne down on his knees; then he said with a light laugh:

"Leave the boy alone, Hastings. You too, Tony. Four against one is not a sporting proposition, is it?"

He took Devinne firmly under the arm, helped him to raise himself, and said quietly:

"You are not quite yourself just now, are you Johnny? Come out into the fresh air a bit. It will do you good."

Devinne tried to shake himself free, but held in Percy's iron grip, he was compelled to move with him across the room. The others naturally did not interfere. They were nursing their indignation, while they watched their chief lead the recalcitrant Johnny out of the room.

"I would like to scrag the brute," Glynde muttered savagely.

"I hope to God Percy does not trust him too far," Sir Andrew added.

"You know what he is," was Lord Tony's comment; "he is so straight, such a sportsman himself, that he simply cannot see treachery in others. The old duke, St. John's father, is a splendid old fellow, rides as straight to hounds as any man I know. Percy is his friend, and he cannot conceive that this young cub is anything but a chip of the old block."

"Shall I go out and wring his neck?" was my Lord Hastings's terse suggestion.

As this excellent solution of the present difficulty could not very well be acted upon, these loyal souls could do naught else but await the return of their chief. They fell to talking over the stirring events of the day and the still more stirring events that were to come.

Now and then they cast anxious looks in the direction of the door, wherever St. John Devinne's rasping voice reached their ears.