“Jeanne!” he said aloud.  “Jeanne!”

Then he was silent, and his nerves grew tense.  The silence was suddenly broken, not rudely but stealthily as a thief breaks it, or as one who knows that crime is best accomplished in the night; a key was being fumbled into the lock.  Sabatier would open quickly, knowing the key and the lock, besides, Sabatier had never come at this hour.  It was a stranger.  Friend or foe?  Barrington moved towards the door.  Whoever came would find him awake, ready to sell life dearly, perchance to win freedom.  The key was pushed home and turned.  The door opened cautiously.

“Seth!”

“Hush, Master Richard.  I know not what danger is near us, but come quickly and quietly.  Bring that lantern.  We must chance the light until I find the way.”

Barrington caught up the lantern from the table and followed him.

“He said to the right,” whispered Seth.

“Who said so?” asked Barrington.

“Sabatier.”

“Is he honest?”

“I don’t know, Master Richard, but he brought me through many vaults and showed me the door, then left me quickly.  He did not lie when he said you were behind it; and see, a way to the right and steps.  He did not lie about them either.”

They went up the stairs cautiously, Seth leading, and at the top was a trapdoor, unfastened, easily lifted.

“Again he told the truth,” Seth whispered.

They were in a cellar full of rubbish, evil smelling, too, and at the end was a door; a turned handle opened it, and a few steps brought them up into a passage.

“Set down the lantern, Master Richard, and blow it out.  We shall not need it.  Come quietly.”

The passage led to an open door, and they stepped into the street, little more than a narrow alley, dark and silent.

“Sabatier said to the right.  All is well so far.  Shall we follow his instructions to the end?”

“Yes,” Barrington answered.

They came without hindrance into a wider street.  It was the street in which Barrington had been attacked by the mob; half of that crowd must have come down this very alley.  They went quickly, their direction towards Monsieur Fargeau’s house.  They entered the street in which it stood, and then Seth stopped.

“We don’t go in yet, Master Richard, I have something to show you first.  There is a little wine shop here, unknown to patriots, I think.  It is safe, safer than Monsieur Fargeau’s perchance.”

The shop was empty.  A woman greeted them and brought them wine.

“Read that letter, Master Richard.  I will tell you how I got it, and why I opened it, afterwards.”

So Jeanne’s letter came into the hands of the man she had turned to in her peril and distress.

Even as he read it, bending over the scraps of paper in the poorly lighted wine shop, she was eagerly questioning Marie.  The letter was of such immense importance to her, so much hung upon it, that now it had gone Jeanne began to wonder whether the best means of getting it into the right hands had been taken, whether a surer method might not have been thought of.