“Which do you wish to see slain?” demanded the black Gervais.

I answered quite truthfully: 

“Monsieur, I shall be pleased either way.”

I know not how he relished the answer, for Yeux-gris cried out at once: 

“Bravo, Felix, you are a paragon!  I have not wit enough to know whether you are as simple as sunshine or as deep as a well, but I love you.”

“Monsieur,” I answered, as I think, very neatly, “if I am a well, truth lies at the bottom.”

“Well, Gervais?” demanded Yeux-gris.

Gervais bent his lowering brows on his cousin.

“Do you say, trust him?”

“Aye, I would trust him.  For never yet did villain turn honest, nor honest man false, in one short hour.  When he was asked to serve against the duke he showed his stuff.  He was no traitor; he was no coward; he was no liar.  I think he is not those now.”

Gervais was still doubtful.

“It is a risk.  If he betrays—­”

“What is life without risks?” cried Yeux-gris.  “I thought you too good a gambler, Gervais, to falter before a risk.”

“Well,” Gervais consented, “I leave it to you.  Do as you like.”

Yeux-gris said at once to me: 

“This Lucas, as I told you, is too cowardly to meet my cousin in open fight.  Since he got the challenge he has never stuck his nose out of doors without two or three of the duke’s guard about him.  Therefore we have the right to get at him as we can.  We have paid a man in the house to tell of his movements.  He is to fare out secretly at night on a mission for M. le Duc, with one comrade only.  M. Gervais and I will interrupt that little journey.”

“Very good, monsieur.  And I?”

“You will meet our spy and learn the hour of the expedition.  Last night, when he told us of the plan, it had not been decided.”

“Then he will be the other man I saw in the window?  I shall know him.”

“You have sharp eyes and a sharp brain, youngster.  But he will not know you.  Therefore you can say you come from the shuttered house in the Rue Coupejarrets.  You will meet him in the little alley to the north of the Hotel St. Quentin.  Do you know your way to the hotel?  Well, then, you are to go down the passageway between the house and M. de Portreuse’s garden—­you cannot mistake it, for on two sides of the house is the street, on the third the garden, and on the fourth the alleyway.  Half-way down the alley is an arch with a small door.  In that arch our man, Louis Martin, will meet you.  Do you understand?”

I repeated the directions.

“You have learned your lesson.  You will ask him the hour—­only that.”

“And you will take oath not to betray us,” commanded Gervais.

I took out the cross that hung on my rosary.  I was ready to swear.  Gervais prompted: 

“I swear to go and come straight, and speak no word to any but Martin.”