planned so long will come off tomorrow with absolute certainty and safety.  And then you throw off your wig and throw up your scheme and throw over your colleague, because I ask you to go into a building and eat a bit of bread.  And then you dare to tell me that you are sure there is nothing watching us.  Then you say you know there is nothing on the very altar you run away from.  You know——­”

“I only know,” said Turnbull, “that I must run away from you.  This has got beyond any talking.”  And he plunged along into the village, leaving his black wig and beard lying behind him on the road.

As the market-place opened before him he saw Count Gregory, that distinguished foreigner, standing and smoking in elegant meditation at the corner of the local café.  He immediately made his way rapidly towards him, considering that a consultation was urgent.  But he had hardly crossed half of that stony quadrangle when a window burst open above him and a head was thrust out, shouting.  The man was in his woollen undershirt, but Turnbull knew the energetic, apologetic head of the sergeant of police.  He pointed furiously at Turnbull and shouted his name.  A policeman ran excitedly from under an archway and tried to collar him.  Two men selling vegetables dropped their baskets and joined in the chase.  Turnbull dodged the constable, upset one of the men into his own basket, and bounding towards the distinguished foreign Count, called to him clamorously:  “Come on, MacIan, the hunt is up again.”

The prompt reply of Count Gregory was to pull off his large yellow whiskers and scatter them on the breeze with an air of considerable relief.  Then he joined the flight of Turnbull, and even as he did so, with one wrench of his powerful hands rent and split the strange, thick stick that he carried.  Inside it was a naked old-fashioned rapier.  The two got a good start up the road before the whole town was awakened behind them; and half-way up it a similar transformation was seen to take place in Mr. Turnbull’s singular umbrella.

The two had a long race for the harbour; but the English police were heavy and the French inhabitants were indifferent.  In any case, they got used to the notion of the road being clear; and just as they had come to the cliffs MacIan banged into another gentleman with unmistakable surprise.  How he knew he was another gentleman merely by banging into him, must remain a mystery.  MacIan was a very poor and very sober Scotch gentleman.  The other was a very drunk and very wealthy English gentleman.  But there was something in the staggered and openly embarrassed apologies that made them understand each other as readily and as quickly and as much as two men talking French in the middle of China.  The nearest expression of the type is that it either hits or apologizes; and in this case both apologized.