Came steps and movements—­steps openly advertised as suppressed with the intent of silence and that yet were deliberately noisy with the secret intent of rousing me if I still slept.  I smiled inwardly at the rascal’s trick.

“Pons,” I ordered, without opening my eyes, “water, cold water, quick, a deluge.  I drank over long last night, and now my gullet scorches.”

“And slept over long to-day,” he scolded, as he passed me the water, ready in his hand.

I sat up, opened my eyes, and carried the tankard to my lips with both my hands.  And as I drank I looked at Pons.

Now note two things.  I spoke in French; I was not conscious that I spoke in French.  Not until afterward, back in solitary, when I remembered what I am narrating, did I know that I had spoken in French—­ay, and spoken well.  As for me, Darrell Standing, at present writing these lines in Murderers’ Row of Folsom Prison, why, I know only high school French sufficient to enable me to read the language.  As for my speaking it—­impossible.  I can scarcely intelligibly pronounce my way through a menu.

But to return.  Pons was a little withered old man.  He was born in our house—­I know, for it chanced that mention was made of it this very day I am describing.  Pons was all of sixty years.  He was mostly toothless, and, despite a pronounced limp that compelled him to go slippity-hop, he was very alert and spry in all his movements.  Also, he was impudently familiar.  This was because he had been in my house sixty years.  He had been my father’s servant before I could toddle, and after my father’s death (Pons and I talked of it this day) he became my servant.  The limp he had acquired on a stricken field in Italy, when the horsemen charged across.  He had just dragged my father clear of the hoofs when he was lanced through the thigh, overthrown, and trampled.  My father, conscious but helpless from his own wounds, witnessed it all.  And so, as I say, Pons had earned such a right to impudent familiarity that at least there was no gainsaying him by my father’s son.

Pons shook his head as I drained the huge draught.

“Did you hear it boil?” I laughed, as I handed back the empty tankard.

“Like your father,” he said hopelessly.  “But your father lived to learn better, which I doubt you will do.”

“He got a stomach affliction,” I devilled, “so that one mouthful of spirits turned it outside in.  It were wisdom not to drink when one’s tank will not hold the drink.”

While we talked Pons was gathering to my bedside my clothes for the day.

“Drink on, my master,” he answered.  “It won’t hurt you.  You’ll die with a sound stomach.”

“You mean mine is an iron-lined stomach?” I wilfully misunderstood him.

“I mean—­” he began with a quick peevishness, then broke off as he realized my teasing and with a pout of his withered lips draped my new sable cloak upon a chair-back.  “Eight hundred ducats,” he sneered.  “A thousand goats and a hundred fat oxen in a coat to keep you warm.  A score of farms on my gentleman’s fine back.”