"Why, no," I said, "I may not read letters that are not addressed to me. What is all this to-do?" He groaned, and cursed his fate because he was himself unable to read. And then, pouring out his words in a very torrent, he told me that, a little after my departure, there had come to the inn the young man whom he had seen in the château Torcy, namely, Armand de Sarney, the Count’s son. Old Jacques conducted the youth to his bedchamber: ’twas plain that he was the expected guest for whom the best room had been bespoke. Stubbs perceived that he bore with him a wallet such as are commonly used by gentlemen for holding letters. Having seen his baggage bestowed in the chamber, the youth descended, but without the wallet, and issued forth into the street. Stubbs watched him until he was out of sight, then stole a tip-toe to the room, slit open the wallet, and withdrew its contents, the papers that he had laid in my hands. "But why?" I asked, staggered by this act of criminal presumption, and thinking the man must be demented. "Because thiccy count be a rare villain, sir," cried Stubbs hoarsely. "I bean’t a fule; I kept my eyes upon him when you sat there a-crackin’ with him, and if he don’t know more’n he ought about thiccy young Frenchman, your friend, I’ll go to the gallows happy. Read the names, sir, read ’un so that I can hear; quick, for he may be back along." In a great wonderment I complied. "Don Antonio de Herrera, Don Miguel de Leon y Buegas; Don Ygnacio de Acosta——" "There! There!" he cried. "I knew it, be jowned! ’Tis the captain of the galleys, the Don Spaniard that has laid many a stripe on my bare back. Read the letter." Again he left me in a great hurry, and I guessed now that he was gone to keep a watch against the return of Armand de Sarney. I was in a quandary. Imprimis, ’twas a dastardly deed to break open the wallet and the seals, and not consonant with plain honesty. Yet I could but acknowledge that a letter writ by the Count de Sarney to the captain of the galleys was a grave cause of suspicion, more especially seeing that the Count had not told me he was acquainted with the Spaniard, as assuredly an innocent man would have done. And so, reflecting that the seal was broken beyond mending, and that my friend’s welfare—nay, perchance, his very life—was at stake, I felt it behoved me to satisfy myself on the matter, and do as my Lord Burghley and Sir Francis Walsingham had done when they discovered those devilish plots against the Queen’s highness. Accordingly I spread open the letter addressed to Don Ygnacio de Acosta, and as I read it all compunction died within me, and I fumed with rage. After the customary salutations, this is what I read—