It was to a towering house with barred windows and great doors that the four Scots retreated.  Entering cautiously by a side portal, Malise led the way with his burden.  This mansion had been the town residence of the first Duke of Touraine, Archibald the Tineman.  It had been occupied by the English for military purposes during their tenancy of the city, and now that they were gone, it had escaped by its very dilapidation the fate of the other possessions of the house of Douglas in France.

James Douglas had obtained the keys from Gervais Bonpoint, the trusty agent of the Avondales in Paris, who also attended to the foreign concerns of most others of the Scottish nobility.  So the four men had taken possession, none saying them nay, and, indeed, in the disordered state of the government, but few being aware of their presence.

Upon an old bedstead hastily covered with plaids, Malise proceeded to make his prisoner comfortable.  Then, having washed the wound and carefully examined it by candlelight, he pronounced his verdict: 

“The young cheat-the-wuddie will do yet, and live to swing by the lang cord about his craig!”

Which, when interpreted in the vulgar, conveyed at once an expectation of a life to be presently prolonged to the swarthy de Sille, but after a time to be cut suddenly short by the hangman.

Every day James Douglas and Sholto haunted the precincts of the Hotel de Pornic and made certain that its terrible master had not departed.  Malise wished to leave Paris and proceed at once to the De Retz country, there to attempt in succession the marshal’s great castles of Machecoul, Tiffauges, and Champtoce, in some one of which he was sure that the stolen maids must be immured.

But James Douglas and Sholto earnestly dissuaded him from the adventure.  How did they know (they reminded him) in which to look?  They were all fortresses of large extent, well garrisoned, and it was as likely as not that they might spend their whole time fruitlessly upon one, without gaining either knowledge or advantage.

Besides, they argued it was not likely that any harm would befall the maids so long as their captor remained in Paris—­that is, none which had not already overtaken them on their journey as prisoners on board the marshal’s ships.

So the Hotel de Pornic and its inhabitants remained under the strict espionage of Sholto and Lord James, while up in the garret in the Rue des Ursulines Laurence nursed his brother clerk and Malise sat gloomily polishing and repolishing the weapons and secret armour of the party.

It was the evening of the third day before the “clout” showed signs of healing.  Its recipient had been conscious on the second day, but, finding himself a prisoner in the hands of the enemy, he had been naturally enough inclined to be a little sulky and suspicious.  But the bright carelessness of Laurence, who dashed at any speech in idiomatic but ungrammatical outlander’s French, gradually won upon him.  As also the fact that Laurence was clerk-learned and could sing and play upon the viol with surprising skill for one so young.