“And these,” cried De Catinat, tugging at his silver shoulder-straps, “they must go.”

“Ah, you draw ahead of me there, for I never had any.  But come, friend, let me know the trouble, that I may see if it may not be mended.”

“To Paris! to Paris!” shouted the guardsman frantically.  “If I am ruined, I may yet be in time to save them.  The horses, quick!”

It was clear to the American that some sudden calamity had befallen, so he aided his comrade and the grooms to saddle and bridle.

Five minutes later they were flying on their way, and in little more than an hour their steeds, all reeking and foam-flecked, were pulled up outside the high house in the Rue St. Martin.  De Catinat sprang from his saddle and rushed upstairs, while Amos followed in his own leisurely fashion.

The old Huguenot and his beautiful daughter were seated at one side of the great fireplace, her hand in his, and they sprang up together, she to throw herself with a glad cry into the arms of her lover, and he to grasp the hand which his nephew held out to him.

At the other side of the fireplace, with a very long pipe in his mouth and a cup of wine upon a settle beside him, sat a strange-looking man, with grizzled hair and beard, a fleshy red projecting nose, and two little gray eyes, which twinkled out from under huge brindled brows.  His long thin face was laced and seamed with wrinkles, crossing and recrossing everywhere, but fanning out in hundreds from the corners of his eyes.  It was set in an unchanging expression, and as it was of the same colour all over, as dark as the darkest walnut, it might have been some quaint figure-head cut out of a coarse-grained wood.  He was clad in a blue serge jacket, a pair of red breeches smeared at the knees with tar, clean gray worsted stockings, large steel buckles over his coarse square-toed shoes, and beside him, balanced upon the top of a thick oaken cudgel, was a weather-stained silver-laced hat.  His gray-shot hair was gathered up behind into a short stiff tail, and a seaman’s hanger, with a brass handle, was girded to his waist by a tarnished leather belt.

De Catinat had been too occupied to take notice of this singular individual, but Amos Green gave a shout of delight at the sight of him, and ran forward to greet him.  The other’s wooden face relaxed so far as to show two tobacco-stained fangs, and, without rising, he held out a great red hand, of the size and shape of a moderate spade.

“Why, Captain Ephraim,” cried Amos in English, “who ever would have thought of finding you here?  De Catinat, this is my old friend Ephraim Savage, under whose charge I came here.”

“Anchor’s apeak, lad, and the hatches down,” said the stranger, in the peculiar drawling voice which the New Englanders had retained from their ancestors, the English Puritans.

“And when do you sail?”

“As soon as your foot is on her deck, if Providence serve us with wind and tide.  And how has all gone with thee, Amos?”