He got no further, became helpless with coughing.  Esther, quite instinctively, pushed the carafe of water towards him.

“Nothing of the sort!” riposted Merri sententiously.  “The wench stays here!”

Both Esther and Jack had much ado to suppress an involuntary cry of relief, which at this unexpected pronouncement had risen to their lips.

The man with the cough tried to protest.

“But—­” he began hoarsely.

“I said, the wench stays here!” broke in Merri peremptorily.  “Ah ca!” he added, with a savage imprecation.  “Do you command here, citizen Rateau, or do I?”

The other at once became humble, even cringing.

“You, of course, citizen,” he rejoined in his hollow voice.  “I would only remark—­”

“Remark nothing,” retorted the other curtly.  “See to it that the cub is out of the house.  And after that put a sentry outside the wench’s door.  No one to go in and out of here under any pretext whatever.  Understand?”

Kennard this time uttered a cry of protest.  The helplessness of his position exasperated him almost to madness.  Two men were holding him tightly by his sinewy arms.  With an Englishman’s instinct for a fight, he would not only have tried, but also succeeded in knocking these two down, and taken the other four on after that, with quite a reasonable chance of success.  That tuberculous creature, now!  And that bandy-legged ruffian!  Jack Kennard had been an amateur middle-weight champion in his day, and these brutes had no more science than an enraged bull!  But even as he fought against that instinct he realised the futility of a struggle.  The danger of it, too—­not for himself, but for her.  After all, they were not going to take her away to one of those awful places from which the only egress was the way to the guillotine; and if there was that amount of freedom there was bound to be some hope.  At twenty there is always hope!

So when, in obedience to Merri’s orders, the two ruffians began to drag him towards the door, he said firmly: 

“Leave me alone.  I’ll go without this unnecessary struggling.”

Then, before the wretches realised his intention, he had jerked himself free from them and run to Esther.

“Have no fear,” he said to her in English, and in a rapid whisper.  “I’ll watch over you.  The house opposite.  I know the people.  I’ll manage it somehow.  Be on the look-out.”

They would not let him say more, and she only had the chance of responding firmly:  “I am not afraid, and I’ll be on the look-out.”  The next moment Merri’s compeers seized him from behind—­four of them this time.