“I was wondering,” he answered pleasantly, “how long you have dwelt in this town and I not known it.  You are from Guienne, methinks.”

“Carcassonne way,” the other said indifferently.  Then memory bringing a deep twinkle to his eye, he added:  “What think you, monsieur?  I was left a week-old babe on the monastery step; was reared up in holiness within its sacred walls; chorister at ten, novice at eighteen, full-fledged friar, fasting, praying, and singing misereres, exhorting dying saints and living sinners, at twenty.”

“A very pretty brotherhood, you for sample.”

“Nay, I am none.  Else I might have stayed.  But one night I took leg-bail, lived in the woods till my hair grew, and struck out for Paris.  And never regretted it, neither.”

He leaned his head back, his eyes fixed contemplatively on the ceiling, and burst into song, in voice as melodious as a lark’s: 

Piety and Grace and Gloom, For such like guests I have no room!  Piety and Gloom and Grace, I bang my door shut in your face!  Gloom and Grace and Piety, I set my dog on such as ye!

Finishing his stave, he continued to beat time with his heel on the floor and to gaze upon the ceiling.  But I think we could not have twitched a finger without his noting it.  M. Etienne rose and leaned across the table toward him.

“M.  Peyrot has made his fortune in Paris?  Monsieur rolls in wealth, of course?”

Peyrot shrugged his shoulders, his eyes leaving the ceiling and making a mocking pilgrimage of the room, resting finally on his own rusty clothing.

“Do I look it?” he answered.

“Oh,” said M. Etienne, slowly, as one who digests an entirely new idea, “I supposed monsieur must be as rich as a Lombard, he is so cold on the subject of turning an honest penny.”

Peyrot’s roving eye condescended to meet his visitor’s.

“Say on,” he permitted lazily.

“I offer twenty pistoles for a packet, seal unbroken, taken at dawn from the person of M. de St. Quentin’s squire.”

“Now you are talking sensibly,” the scamp said, as if M. Etienne had been the shuffler.  “That is a fair offer and demands a fair answer.  Moreover, such zeal as you display deserves success.  I will look about a bit this morning among my friends and see if I can get wind of your packet.  I will meet you at dinner-time at the inn of the Bonne Femme.”

“Dinner-time is far hence.  You forget, M. Peyrot, that you are risen earlier than usual.  I will go out and sit on the stair for five minutes while you consult your friends.”

Peyrot grinned cheerfully.

“M. de Mar doesn’t seem able to get it through his head that I know nothing whatever of this affair.”

“No, I certainly don’t get that through my head.”

Peyrot regarded him with an air ill-used yet compassionate, such as he might in his monkish days have employed toward one who could not be convinced, for instance, of the efficacy of prayer.