“Vanni!” said Alan under his breath.

“Oh, he can be trusted,” said Giovanni, with a glance at the guide.  “I have been here two days.  This was Archiater’s private workshop.  The mountain people think it is haunted, so that it is a good place to hide.  I was not pleased when I found that your clerk had taken it for his own.  I lay upon the roof for two hours yesterday watching him.  Having an errand at Rheims I thought I would come along and see what had happened to you.”

Alan had as yet no right to tell the most important thing that had happened.  “I have not been here before,” he said.  “Simon has put me off, and he does not know I am here now.”

“Has he shown you his findings?  He took a bag away with him—­a heavy one.”

“Only some minerals which are worth more than he thinks.  I have been working with them more or less.  He is mightily curious about the action of the furnace.  I make a guess he is going to try to test the ore himself.”

“There is a donkey-load of it here,” said Giovanni, tilting with his foot a stone in the floor.  Under it gleamed a mass of irregular shining fragments and yellow lumps of stone.  Alan picked up one and scraped it, struck it with a hammer, rubbed it across a chip of wood, “Guy was right,” he said, “it is not gold.  I can prove that to the fellow if he gives me a chance.”

“What shall you do?”

“I am not sure.  Are you safe here?”

“So long as they do not know I am here.  Master Gay and his son are at Rheims, and I am to join them.  If you will come to-morrow or the day after we can go together.  I will show you a short way over the mountains that Cimarron found when we were here.  Stefano knows of my coming, and I shall see him to-night.”

Alan had been thinking.  “Vanni, I will do this.  I will go with you to-morrow if I can, but if I do not meet you here before noon you will know that I must stay on.  Will that answer?”

“I suppose it must.  I dislike leaving you here with a twice-proved rascal like this Simon.  You do not know what he may do.”

“I should like to thrash him,” said Alan.  “He is planning to get the whole of this gold, as he thinks it, for himself.”

“Of course he is.  But what good would it do to beat him?  You cannot thrash the inside of him, can you?”

Alan laughed, and strode off to the place where the horses were tethered.  Before returning to his lodgings he went to see Stefano.

“Well,” said the jester when he had heard all, “what shall you do?”

Alan hesitated.  “So far as my errand is concerned,” he answered, “I might join Giovanni to-morrow.  We had all along suspected that the ore was only fool’s gold.  But—­”

“I know,” nodded the jester.  “And for that other reason, I am going to tell you something.  I have known for some time that Josian is not safe in my care.  It has never been over-safe, this arrangement, but while she was a child the risk was not so great.  Also, having the Emperor’s favor, I could do more for her than any one else could—­then.