"Is it really you?" said Cocarda.s.se, when he thought the embrace had lasted long enough, holding Pa.s.sepoil firmly by the shoulders and gazing fixedly into his pale, pathetic face.

Pa.s.sepoil nodded. "Truly. What red star guides you to Paris?"

Cocarda.s.se dropped his voice to a whisper. "I had a letter."

Pa.s.sepoil whispered in reply: "So had I."

Cocarda.s.se amplified: "My letter told me to be outside the Inn of the Three Graces, near Neuilly, on a certain day--this day--to serve the Prince of Gonzague."

Pa.s.sepoil nodded again. "So did mine."

Cocarda.s.se continued: "Mine enclosed a draft on the Bank of Ma.r.s.eilles to pay expenses."

Pa.s.sepoil noted a point of difference: "Mine was on the Bank of Calais."

"I suppose Gonzague wants all that are left of us," Cocarda.s.se said, thoughtfully.

Pa.s.sepoil sighed significantly. "There aren't many."

Cocarda.s.se looked as gloomy as was possible for one of his rubicund countenance and jolly bearing. "Lagardere has kept his word."

"Staupitz was killed at Seville," Pa.s.sepoil murmured, as one who begins a catalogue of disasters.

Cocarda.s.se continued: "Faenza was killed at Burgos."

Pa.s.sepoil went on: "Saldagno at Toledo."

Cocarda.s.se took up the tale: "Pinto at Valladolid."

Pa.s.sepoil concluded the catalogue: "Joel at Grenada, Pepe at Cordova."

"All with the same wound," Cocarda.s.se commented, with a curious solemnity in his habitually jovial voice.

Pa.s.sepoil added, lugubriously: "The thrust between the eyes."

Cocarda.s.se summed up, significantly: "The thrust of Nevers."

The pair were silent for an instant, looking at each other with something like dismay upon their faces, and their minds were evidently busy with old days and old dangers.

Pa.s.sepoil broke the silence. "They didn't make much by their blood-money."

"Yes," said Cocarda.s.se; "but we, who refused to hunt Lagardere, we are alive."

Pa.s.sepoil cast a melancholy glance over his own dingy habiliments and then over the garments of Cocarda.s.se, garments which, although glowing enough in color, were over-darned and over-patched to suggest opulence.

"In a manner," he said, dryly.

Cocarda.s.se drew himself up proudly and slapped his chest. "Poor but honest."

Pa.s.sepoil allowed a faint smile, expressive of satisfaction, to steal over his melancholy countenance. "Thank Heaven, in Paris we can't meet Lagardere."

Cocarda.s.se appeared plainly to share the pleasure of his old friend. "An exile dare not return," he said, emphatically, with the air of a man who feels sure of himself and of his words. But it is the way of destiny very often, even when a man is surest of himself and surest of his words, to interpose some disturbing factor in his confident calculations, to make some unexpected move upon the chess-board of existence, which altogether baffles his plans and ruins his hopes. So many people had crossed the bridge that morning that it really seemed little less than probable that the appearance of a fresh pedestrian upon its arch could have any serious effect upon the satisfactory reflections of the two bravos. Yet at that moment a man did appear upon the bridge, who paused and surveyed Cocarda.s.se and Pa.s.sepoil, whose backs were towards him, with a significant smile.

The new-comer was humbly clad, very much in the fashion of one of those gypsies who had pitched their camp so close to the wayside tavern; but if the man's clothes were something of the gypsy habit, he carried a sword under his ragged mantle, and it was plain from the man's face that he was not a gypsy. His handsome, daring, humorous face, bronzed by many suns and lined a little by many experiences--a face that in its working mobility and calm inscrutability might possibly have been the countenance of a strolling player--was the face of a man still in the prime of life, and carrying his years as lightly as if he were still little more than a lad. He moved noiselessly from the bridge to the high-road, and came cautiously upon the swashbucklers at the very moment when Pa.s.sepoil was saying, with a shiver: "I'm always afraid to hear Lagardere's voice cry out Nevers's motto."

Even on the instant the man in the gypsy habit pushed his way between the two bandits, laying a hand on each of their shoulders and saying three words: "I am here!"

Cocarda.s.se and Pa.s.sepoil fell apart, each with the same cry in the same amazed voice.

"Lagardere!" said Cocarda.s.se, and his ruddy face paled.

"Lagardere!" said Pa.s.sepoil, and his pale face flushed.

As for Lagardere, he laughed heartily at their confusion. "You are like scared children whose nurse hears bogey in the chimney."

Cocarda.s.se strove to seem amused. "Children!" he said, with a forced laugh, and it was with a forced laugh that Pa.s.sepoil repeated the word "Bogey."

For a moment the good-humor faded from the face of Lagardere, and he spoke grimly enough: "There were nine a.s.sa.s.sins in the moat at Caylus.

How many are left now?"

"Only three," Cocarda.s.se answered.

Pa.s.sepoil was more precise. "Cocarda.s.se and myself and aesop."

Lagardere looked at them mockingly. "Doesn't it strike you that aesop will soon be alone?"

Cocarda.s.se shuddered. "It's no laughing matter."

Lagardere still continued to smile. "Vengeance sometimes wears a sprightly face and smiles while she strikes."

Pa.s.sepoil was now a sickly green. "A very painful humor," he stammered.

There was an awkward pause, and then Cocarda.s.se suddenly spoke in a decisive tone. "Captain, you have no right to kill us," he growled, and Pa.s.sepoil, nodding his long head, repeated his companion's phrase with Norman emphasis.

Lagardere looked from one to the other of the pair, and there was a twinkle in his eyes that rea.s.sured them. "Are you scared, old knaves? No explanations; let me speak. That night in Caylus, seventeen years ago, when the darkness quivered with swords, I did not meet your blades."

Cocarda.s.se explained. "When you backed Nevers we took no part in the scuffle."

"Nor did we join in hunting you later," Pa.s.sepoil added, hurriedly.

Lagardere's face wore a look of satisfaction. "In all the tumult of that tragic night I thought I saw two figures standing apart--thought they might be, must be, my old friends. That is why I have sent for you."

"Sent for us?" Cocarda.s.se echoed in astonishment.

"Was it you who--" Pa.s.sepoil questioned, equally surprised.

"Why, of course it was," Lagardere answered. "Sit down and listen."

He led the way to the very table at which, such a short time before, aesop had sat with Peyrolles. Now he and Cocarda.s.se and Pa.s.sepoil seated themselves, the two bravos side by side and still seemingly not a little perturbed, Lagardere opposite to them and studying them closely, resting his chin upon his hands.