"Easy, lad," Blakeney responded; "pull yourself together. Froggie knows nothing."

Froggie was within earshot now. He began to talk. Devinne did not at once catch what he said, for all his senses were numb. But he did make an effort to drag himself out of the cart.

Holte greeted him with an exuberant: "Hello, Johnnie!" and Blakeney said: "Devinne is a bit stiff; he was badly knocked about at Choisy."

Whereupon Holte took Devinne by the arm and turned with him towards the house.

"Are you staying the night?" he asked of the chief.

"Yes. We can't make much headway this weather. The snow may give over after midnight and the moon may come out. If she does not, we'll start in the early dawn. Get along, Froggie," he went on; "I'll see to the horses. I suppose you've got something for us to eat."

"Yes," the other called out over his shoulder. "Stale bread and a piece of pig's meat, and I can hot up some sour wine for you. I've been to market this morning."

Blakeney took the horses round to the back while Holte guided Devinne's footsteps up to the house. He was one of those men who couldn't stop talking, and immediately he began: "You know, of course," and "Blakeney told you, I suppose." This, that and the other. Devinne, who knew nothing, only listened with half an ear. Presently he found himself sitting in front of a wood fire with Holte still talking volubly.

And then Blakeney came in. He asked:

"At what time did Ffoulkes and Pradel come through?"

"In the early morning; I couldn't say exactly when. My watch has stopped, curse it!"

"They had no adventures?"

"None. I soon had the fresh horses ready for them, you know, the ones from the coach, and off they went again. I made Ffoulkes tell me how you got the Frenchman away. He seemed a nice fellow, I thought. Very quiet. But, begad! according to Ffoulkes, the way you engineered that affair was-"

"Perfectly simple," Blakeney broke in quickly. "You are a good fellow, Froggie, but you talk too much. Suppose you get us something to eat. Devinne is famished and so am I."

"All right! All right!" Holte retorted good-humouredly and turned to go. But at the door he halted.

"I'll tell you all about it, Johnnie," he said, "just as I had it from Ffoulkes. I tell you it was nothing short of-"

He was interrupted by his own hat being hurled at his head, and his chief's voice saying peremptorily:

"And if you don't go and get that luxurious supper, I'll put you in irons for insubordination."

Holte went and the two men were alone. He who had done to his friend the greatest possible injury any man could do to another, was now face to face with the chief whom he had betrayed. Blakeney went over to the window and gazed out into the darkness and the thickly falling snow. Devinne rose and went across the room. He put out his hand. Tentatively. It was moist and shaking. He took Percy's hand which was hanging by his side, that slender hand which had so often grasped his in friendship, and with a heart-rending sob laid his hot forehead against it.

"Percy!" he murmured, "for God's sake, say something."

"What shall I say, dear lad?" Blakeney responded, and gently disengaged his hand. "That I could not bear to see an English gentleman, the son of my old friend, thrown to those hyenas."

"How you must despise me!"

"I despise no one, Johnnie. I have seen too much of sorrow, misguided enthusiasm, even of crime, not to understand many, many things I had not even dreamed of before."

"Crime? There is no worse crime in the world than mine."

"And no worse punishment, lad, than what you will endure."

"God, yes!" Devinne said fervently. "Then why did you risk your precious life to save my miserable one?"

Blakeney broke into his infectious laugh.

"Why? Why? I don't know, Johnnie. Ask Ffoulkes-he will give you a sentimental reason. Ask Tony and he will say it is for the love of sport, and I am not sure that good old Tony wouldn't be right after all. Thanks to you, lad, I have had one of the most exhilarating runs across country I have ever had in my life."

Devinne sank into a chair and buried his face in his hands.

"How they will all loathe the sight of me," he murmured.

"Well, you will have to put up with that, my good fellow, and with other things as well. Anyway, your father knows nothing and never will. After that . . . Well! England is at war with France, so you will know what to do."

"Percy . . . I . . ."

"Easy now. Here's Holte coming with his banquet."

And the three of them sat down to a sumptuous meal of pig's meat and stale bread and drank hot wine, which put warmth into them. Blakeney was at his merriest.

"You should have seen," he said to Holte, "that miserable catiff who, much against his will, impersonated the Scarlet Pimpernel. The one thing I shall regret to my dying day is that I was not present when my dear Monsieur Chambertin first gazed on his beautiful countenance and saw that it was not that of his friend, Sir Percy Blakeney."

Holte did a great deal of talking, and asked numberless questions, but Devinne, with aching soul and aching body, soon made his way to one of the other rooms in the house where there was a truckle bed on which he had slept more than once in the happy olden days.

He sat down on the edge of it, and burying his head in his hands, he sobbed like a child.

EPILOGUE

Often, after the curtain has been rung down on the last act of a play, comedy or drama, one would wish to peep through and see what is going on on the darkened stage. A moment ago it was full of light, of animation, of that tense atmosphere which pervades the closing scene of a moving story, and now there are only the scene-shifters moving about like ghosts through the dimmed light, the stage-manager talking to the carpenter or the electricians, the minor rôles still chattering in the wings, or the principals hurrying to their dressing-rooms.

In the same way it seems to me that one would wish to see just once more those actors who each in their individual way have played their part in that strange drama which had for its chief characters a young traitor and a light-hearted adventurer, reckless of his life, a true sportsman who in a spirit of sublime devilry achieved one of the noblest exploits it has ever been the good fortune of an historian to relate.

Thus it is possible to have a peep at the minor rôles, to see Monsieur le Docteur Pradel and Cécile, his pretty young wife, in their humble home in the village of Kensington. They are supremely happy, but are as poor as the proverbial church mice, as poor as all those unfortunate French men and women whom a lucky chance has enabled to find a refuge in hospitable England-chance or the devotion of a man whose real identity they will never discover. Sometimes one among them who is over-sensitive, perhaps, will feel a thrill when meeting a pair of lazy, good-natured blue eyes, the true expression of which is veiled behind heavy lids. Such a one is Cécile Pradel who, when she meets those eyes, or hears the timbre of a quaint rather inane laugh, will suddenly recall a day of torment in the old château of La Rodière, a dance, the music of the rigaudon, a fiddler with grimy face and ringing voice and strange compelling eyes. The same voice? The same eyes? No! no! it couldn't be! And she would look up almost with apology for those foolish thoughts on the magnificent figure of Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart., the friend of the Prince of Wales, the most exquisite dandy that ever graced a ballroom, the most inane fop that ever caused society to laugh.