“Ah Comte de la Fere,” said a calm voice, though hoarse with running, “is it your habit to calumniate the absent?”

This reproof stung Athos to the heart, but as the impression produced by seeing D’Artagnan foremost in a coarse, ferocious crowd had been very strong, he contented himself with replying: 

“I am not calumniating you, my friend.  They were anxious about you here; I simply told them where you were.  You didn’t know King Charles; to you he was only a foreigner and you were not obliged to love him.”

So saying, he stretched out his hand, but the other pretended not to see it and he let it drop again slowly by his side.

“Ugh!  I am tired,” cried D’Artagnan, sitting down.

“Drink a glass of port,” said Aramis; “it will refresh you.”

“Yes, let us drink,” said Athos, anxious to make it up by hobnobbing with D’Artagnan, “let us drink and get away from this hateful country.  The felucca is waiting for us, you know; let us leave to-night, we have nothing more to do here.”

“You are in a hurry, sir count,” said D’Artagnan.

“But what would you have us to do here, now that the king is dead?”

“Go, sir count,” replied D’Artagnan, carelessly; “you see nothing to keep you a little longer in England?  Well, for my part, I, a bloodthirsty ruffian, who can go and stand close to a scaffold, in order to have a better view of the king’s execution —­ I remain.”

Athos turned pale.  Every reproach his friend uttered struck deeply in his heart.

“Ah! you remain in London?” said Porthos.

“Yes.  And you?”

“Hang it!” said Porthos, a little perplexed between the two, “I suppose, as I came with you, I must go away with you.  I can’t leave you alone in this abominable country.”

“Thanks, my worthy friend.  So I have a little adventure to propose to you when the count is gone.  I want to find out who was the man in the mask, who so obligingly offered to cut the king’s throat.”

“A man in a mask?” cried Athos.  “You did not let the executioner escape, then?”

“The executioner is still in the cellar, where, I presume, he has had an interview with mine host’s bottles.  But you remind me.  Mousqueton!”

“Sir,” answered a voice from the depths of the earth.

“Let out your prisoner.  All is over.”

“But,” said Athos, “who is the wretch that has dared to raise his hand against his king?”

“An amateur headsman,” replied Aramis, “who however, does not handle the axe amiss.”

“Did you not see his face?” asked Athos.

“He wore a mask.”

“But you, Aramis, who were close to him?”

“I could see nothing but a gray beard under the fringe of the mask.”

“Then it must be a man of a certain age.”

“Oh!” said D’Artagnan, “that matters little.  When one puts on a mask, it is not difficult to wear a beard under it.”