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.