“Now, Pierre Benoist,” said Sir George, “for the last time I give you warning.  If you do not speak, freely and to the purpose, it will be the worse for you.  There be those who can tell me what I desire to know.  As for you, I shall deliver you to the Provost-Sergeant, who will need no words from me to tell him how to deal with you.  I ask you, is Michael Lempriere in correspondence with Henry Dumaresq?”

“Palfrancordi! Messire; you press me hard,” said the prisoner, but his eye was scarcely that of a pressed man.  “When you examined me a week ago in secret I think I answered that.  I know of no letters that have passed between M. de Samares and M. de Maufant.  That is,” he added hastily, as the Governor began to look impatient, “I have carried none myself.”

“Who has?” asked the Governor.

The Greffier, at a signal from Carteret, plunged his pen into the ink; the halberdiers shifted their legs and leaned upon their weapons; the prisoner moistened his lips with his tongue.

“Speak, Benoist; who carried the letters?”

“It was Alain Le Gallais,” answered Pierre in a low voice.

“It was Alain Le Gallais?  Write, Master Greffier, the prisoner says that the letters were carried by one Alain Le Gallais.  You are sure of that, Benoist?”

“As sure as my name is Peter.”  A cock crew in the yard of the castle.  The coincidence did not seem to strike any of the party in the room.

“By what route did Le Gallais go?”

“He went by Boulay Bay.”

“By what conveyance?”

“By Lesbirel’s lugger.”

“When did he go last?”

“This is the fourth day.”

Carteret compared these replies with some that lay before him, and proceeded:—­

“Do you know when he will return?”

“I cannot know; but I can divine.  The wind is changing; if he landed at Southampton on Monday night he would be in London in twenty-four hours, riding on the horses of the Parliament.  Riding back in the same way he might be back in Boulay Bay, with a fair wind, some time to-morrow.”

“C’est assez,” said the Governor, “take the prisoner away; but not to his former quarters.  Lodge him in Prynne’s old cell.”

As the prisoner was being removed, in obedience to these orders, he was seen to limp heavily, and there was a bandage on one of his legs.

“March, comrade,” said one of his guards, when they were in the corridor.

“My leg was hurt, John Le Gros, when I tried to escape last night.”

“Not so badly but you can walk if you like,” and the militia-man emphasised his words by a slight thrust with the point of his weapon.

To which of the parties in the island Master Benoist was faithful, the muse that presides over this history declines to reveal:  perhaps he was an impartial traitor to both.  It became presently clear that, in any case, his lameness was little more than a feint.  During that same night he made a rope of his bedding, and letting himself down from the window of his cell at high water, swam like a fish to the unwatched shore of Anneport, and so effected his escape.  It was long ere he was again heard of by the Jersey authorities; but there is no record to show that he was either mourned or missed.