Despite our anxiety not to miss a word, an approaching step warned us at this moment to draw back.  More than once before we had done so to escape the notice of a wayfarer passing up and down.  But this time I had a difficulty in inducing the king to adopt the precaution.  Yet it was well that I succeeded, for the person who came stumbling along toward us did not pass, but, mounting the steps, walked by within touch of us and entered the house.

“The plot thickens,” muttered the king.  “Who is this?”

At the moment he asked I was racking my brain to remember.  I have a good eye and a fair recollection for faces, and this was one I had seen several times.  The features were so familiar that I suspected the man of being a courtier in disguise, and I ran over the names of several persons whom I knew to be Bouillon’s secret agents.  But he was none of these, and obeying the king’s gesture, I bent myself again to the task of listening.

The girl looked up on the man’s entrance, but did not rise.  “You are late, Martin,” she said.

“A little,” the newcomer answered.  “How do you do, Master Andrew?  What cheer?  What, still vexing, mistress?” he added contemptuously to the girl.  “You have too soft a heart for this business!”

She sighed, but made no answer.

“You have made up your mind to it, I hear?” said the innkeeper.

“That is it.  Needs must when the devil drives!” replied the man jauntily.  He had a downcast, reckless, luckless air, yet in his face I thought I still saw traces of a better spirit.

“The devil in this case was Epernon,” quoth Andrew.

“Aye, curse him!  I would I had cut his dainty throat before he crossed my threshold,” cried the desperado.  “But there, it is too late to say that now.  What has to be done, has to be done.”

“How are you going about it?  Poison, the mistress says.”

“Yes; but if I had my way,” the man growled fiercely, “I would out one of these nights and cut the dogs’ throats in the kennel!”

“You could never escape, Martin!” the girl cried, rising in excitement.  “It would be hopeless.  It would merely be throwing away your own life.”

“Well, it is not to be done that way, so there is an end of it,” quoth the man wearily.  “Give me my supper.  The devil take the king and Sully too!  He will soon have them.”

On this Master Andrew rose, and I took his movement toward the door for a signal for us to retire.  He came out at once, shutting the door behind him as he bade the pair within a loud good night.  He found us standing in the street waiting for him and forthwith fell on his knees in the mud and looked up at me, the perspiration standing thick on his white face.  “My lord,” he cried hoarsely, “I have earned my pardon!”

“If you go on,” I said encouragingly, “as you have begun, have no fear.”  Without more ado I whistled up the Swiss and bade Maignan go with them and arrest the man and woman with as little disturbance as possible.  While this was being done we waited without, keeping a sharp eye upon the informer, whose terror, I noted with suspicion, seemed to be in no degree diminished.  He did not, however, try to escape, and Maignan presently came to tell us that he had executed the arrest without difficulty or resistance.