“But, my dear sir!” Good-nature oozed out of every pore of the fat body of the master player.  “It is nothing at all.  But, by all means.  Rhodomont will provide what you require.  He is the dandy of the company in real life, though a fire-eater on the stage.  Hi, Rhodomont!”

The young ablutionist straightened his long body from the right angle in which it had been bent over the bucket, and looked out through a foam of soapsuds.  Pantaloon issued an order, and Rhodomont, who was indeed as gentle and amiable off the stage as he was formidable and terrible upon it, made the stranger free of the bucket in the friendliest manner.

So Andre-Louis once more removed his neckcloth and his coat, and rolled up the sleeves of his fine shirt, whilst Rhodomont procured him soap, a towel, and presently a broken comb, and even a greasy hair-ribbon, in case the gentleman should have lost his own.  This last Andre-Louis declined, but the comb he gratefully accepted, and having presently washed himself clean, stood, with the towel flung over his left shoulder, restoring order to his dishevelled locks before a broken piece of mirror affixed to the door of the travelling house.

He was standing thus, what time the gentle Rhodomont babbled aimlessly at his side when his ears caught the sound of hooves.  He looked over his shoulder carelessly, and then stood frozen, with uplifted comb and loosened mouth.  Away across the common, on the road that bordered it, he beheld a party of seven horsemen in the blue coats with red facings of the marechaussee.

Not for a moment did he doubt what was the quarry of this prowling gendarmerie.  It was as if the chill shadow of the gallows had fallen suddenly upon him.

And then the troop halted, abreast with them, and the sergeant leading it sent his bawling voice across the common.

“Hi, there!  Hi!” His tone rang with menace.

Every member of the company — and there were some twelve in all — stood at gaze.  Pantaloon advanced a step or two, stalking, his
head thrown back, his manner that of a King’s Lieutenant.

“Now, what the devil’s this?” quoth he, but whether of Fate or Heaven or the sergeant, was not clear.

There was a brief colloquy among the horsemen, then they came trotting across the common straight towards the players’ encampment.

Andre-Louis had remained standing at the tail of the travelling house.  He was still passing the comb through his straggling hair, but mechanically and unconsciously.  His mind was all intent upon the advancing troop, his wits alert and gathered together for a leap in whatever direction should be indicated.

Still in the distance, but evidently impatient, the sergeant bawled a question.

“Who gave you leave to encamp here?”

It was a question that reassured Andre-Louis not at all.  He was not deceived by it into supposing or even hoping that the business of these men was merely to round up vagrants and trespassers.  That was no part of their real duty; it was something done in passing — done, perhaps, in the hope of levying a tax of their own.  It was very long odds that they were from Rennes, and that their real business was the hunting down of a young lawyer charged with sedition.  Meanwhile Pantaloon was shouting back.