engaged in the matter, that know as much as this, and you can see that it is better it should be so.  Look at that man opposite; he has been here fifteen years; he seldom speaks; he does his work, but it is as a brute beast —­ despair has well nigh turned him into one.  Think you that if such a man as that were to know that there is hope, he would not be so changed that even the dullest would observe it?  I see you are a brisk young fellow, and I say to you, keep up your courage.  The time is nearer than you think when you will be free from these accursed shackles.”

Each morning, as he went out to work with his gang, Gervaise saw the servant from the auberge standing near; but he made no sign.  He was satisfied that his suspicions had been justified, and that he was not leading this life in vain, but he thought it better to wait until the week passed, and he was taken away to have his colour renewed, than to make a sign that might possibly rouse the suspicions of his comrades.  On the eighth morning, when the door of the room was unlocked, the overseer said —­ “Number 36, you will remain here.  You are wanted for other work.”

After the gang had left the prison, the overseer returned.

“I am to take you up to the English auberge.  The knight who handed you over to me when you landed, told me that you might be wanted as a servitor; and as it is he who has sent down, it may be that a vacancy has occurred.  If so, you are in luck, for the servitors have a vastly better time of it than the galley slaves, and the English auberge has the best reputation in that respect.  Come along with me.”

The English auberge was one of the most handsome of the buildings standing in the great street of the Knights.  Its architecture was Gothic in its character, and, although the langue was one of the smallest of those represented at Rhodes, it vied with any of them in the splendour of its appointments.  Sir John Boswell was standing in the interior courtyard.

“Wait here for a few minutes,” he said to the overseer.  “The bailiff will himself question the slave as to his accomplishments; but I fancy he will not be considered of sufficient age for the post that is vacant.  However, if this should not be so, I shall no doubt find a post to fit him ere long, for he seems a smart young fellow, and, what is better, a willing one, and bears himself well under his misfortunes.”

Then he motioned to Gervaise to follow him to the bailiff’s apartments.

“Well, Sir Gervaise,” Sir John Kendall exclaimed, as the door closed behind him, “have you found aught to justify this cruel penance you have undertaken?”

“As to the penance, Sir John, it has been nothing unsupportable.  The exercise is hard enough, but none too hard for one in good health and strength, and, save for the filth of the chamber in which we are shut up at night, and the foul state of the rushes on which we lie, I should have naught to complain of.  No, I have as yet heard nothing of a surety —­ and yet enough to show me that my suspicions were justified, and that there is a plot of some sort on foot,” and he related to the two knights the conversation he had had with the galley slave.