“We thought you were the Marquis du Plessy’s son, Lazarre.  I always have believed that story the Holland woman told in the cabin, about your rank being superior to mine.  Don’t be cut up about Madame de Ferrier!  You may have to go to Russia again for her, but you’ll get her!”

The witch shook the mist of hair at the sides of her pretty aquiline face, blew a kiss at me, and ran up the staircase and out of my life.  After waiting long for Doctor Chantry I hurried to Skenedonk and sent him with instructions to find my master and conclude our affair before coming back.

The Indian silently entered the Du Plessy hotel after dusk, crestfallen and suspicious.  He brought nothing but a letter, left in Doctor Chantry’s room; and no other trace remained of Doctor Chantry.

“What has he done with himself, Skenedonk?” I exclaimed.

The Oneida begged me to read that we might trail him.

It was a long and very tiresome letter written in my master’s spider tracks, containing long and tiresome enumerations of his services.  He presented a large bill for his guardianship on the voyage and across France.  He said I was not only a Rich Man through his Influence, but I had proved myself an ungrateful one, and had robbed him of his only Sentiment after a disappointed Existence.  My Impudence was equaled only by my astonishing Success, and he chose not to contemplate me as the Husband of Beauty and Lofty Station, whose Shoes he in his Modesty and Worth, felt unworthy to unlatch.  Therefore he withdrew that very day from Paris, and would embrace the Opportunity of going into pensive Retirement and rural Contemplation, in his native Kingdom; where his Sister would join him when she could do so with Dignity and Propriety.

I glanced from line to line smiling, but the postscript brought me to my feet.

“The Deposit which you left with me I shall carry with me, as no more than my Due for lifting low Savagery to high Gentility, and beg to subscribe my Thanks for at least this small Tribute of Gratitude.”

“Doctor Chantry is gone with the money!”

Skenedonk bounded up grasping the knife which he always carried in a sheath hanging from his belt.

“Which way did the old woman go?”

“Stop,” I said.

The Indian half crouched for counsel.

“I’ll be a prince!  Let him have it.”

“Let him rob you?”

“We’re quits, now.  I’ve paid him for the lancet stab I gave him.”

“But you haven’t a whole bagful of coin left.”

“We brought nothing into France, and it seems certain we shall take nothing but experience out of it.  And I’m young, Skenedonk.  He isn’t.”

The Oneida grunted.  He was angrier than I had ever seen him.

“We ought to have knocked the old woman on the head at Saratoga,” he responded.

Annabel’s trick had swept away my little fortune.  With recklessness which repeated loss engenders I proposed we scatter the remaining coin in the street, but Skenedonk prudently said we would divide and conceal it in our clothes.  I gave the kind valet a handful to keep his heart warm; and our anxieties about our valuables were much lightened.