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Peyrot's roving eye condescended to meet his visitor's. "Say on," he permitted lazily. "I offer twenty pistoles for a packet, seal unbroken, taken at dawn from the person of M. de St. Quentin's squire." "Now you are talking sensibly," the scamp said, as if M. Étienne had been the shuffler. "That is a fair offer and demands a fair answer. Moreover, such zeal as you display deserves success.
If there ever comes a day when You-know-who is down and you are up, I shall be pleased to serve you as well as I have served him." "I hanker not for such service as you have given him," M. Étienne answered. Peyrot's eyes twinkled brighter than ever. "I have said it. I will serve you as vigourously as I have served him. Bear me in mind, monsieur." "Come, Félix," was all my lord's answer.
From the archway, which was entrance to a court of tall houses, I could well command Peyrot's door, myself in deep shadow M. Étienne nodded to me and walked off whistling, staring full in the face every one he met. I would fain have occupied myself as we guessed the knave Peyrot to be doing, and shut mine aching eyes in sleep.
I shall buy me better out of his fifty pistoles." But M. Étienne was out in the passage, I following, banging the door after me. We went down the stair in time to Peyrot's lusty carolling: Mirth I'll keep, though riches fly, While Folly's sure to linger by! "Think you we'll get the packet?" I asked. "Aye. I think he wants his fifty pistoles. Mordieu! it's galling to let this dog set the terms."
At length M. Étienne walked over to the chest by the chimneypiece and deliberately put his hand on the key. Instantly Peyrot's voice rang out, "Stop!" M. Étienne, turning, looked into his pistol-barrel. My lord stood exactly as he was, bent over the chest, his fingers on the key, looking over his shoulder at the bravo with raised, protesting eyebrows and laughing mouth.
Even should he tell, we had the business to begin again from the very beginning, with some other knave mayhap worse than this. Plainly the game was in Peyrot's hands; we could play only to his lead. "If you will put the packet into my hands, seal unbroken, this day at eleven, I engage to meet you with twenty pistoles," M. Étienne said. "Twenty pistoles were a fair price for the packet.
Marry, I was sleeping the sleep of the virtuous." M. Étienne slipped across the room as quickly as Peyrot's self might have done, lifted up a heavy curtain hanging before an alcove, and disclosed the bed folded smooth, the pillow undisturbed. He turned with a triumphant grin on the owner, who showed all his teeth pleasantly in answer, no whit abashed.
I was helped in carrying out my virtuous resolve by the fact that the court was populous and my carcass in the entrance much in the way of the busy passers-by, so that full half of them swore at me, and the half of that half kicked me. The hard part was that I could not fight them because of keeping my eyes on Peyrot's door.
But I was sternly determined to be faithful to my trust, and though for my greater comfort cold enough comfort it was I sat me down on the paving-stones, yet I kept my eyelids propped open, my eyes on Peyrot's door.
Possibly he schooled himself so to bear it, but I think rather that he felt so easily secure on the height of his gentlehood that Peyrot's impudence merely tickled him. "I was wondering," he answered pleasantly, "how long you have dwelt in this town and I not known it. You are from Guienne, methinks." "Carcassonne way," the other said indifferently.
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