It is ill work kicking one’s heels in camp when no fighting is toward, and I was glad enough when a servant of Jean Prévost’s came to me in the afternoon with a request from his master that I would join him and a few more in a gallop. I donned my doublet—the same which I had worn on the night of my ride—and chancing to put my hand into its inner pocket, I felt some small thing which, when I took it out, I found to be a thin roll of paper. For a brief space I looked at it in a kind of puzzlement, turning it over in my fingers, at a loss to know how I had gotten it. And then, in a flash, it came back to me. I told you that before I lost my way near the château of St Aubyn-le-cauf, I had already met with some hindrance in my journey, and I declare that the surprising events that had happened afterwards had clean driven it from my memory; but now I remembered it perfectly. About two miles out of St Jacques, just as the dusk was falling, and a drizzle of rain, I came to a cross-roads, and saw a man lying in a huddled heap by the roadside. I got off my horse to look more closely at him, and when I bent over him, I saw that he was stretched in a pool of blood, and there were great gashes in his doublet, not such clean cuts as a rapier makes, but jagged rents, the work of coarser instruments. I spoke to him, and he opened his eyes and groaned feebly, and then endeavoured to speak; but he was plainly very far gone, and I could make nothing of his mutterings. I looked around to see if there was any house whereto I might convey the man, who I supposed had been beset by footpads, but there was no dwelling at hand, and I was considering whether I should lift him on to my horse, when he lifted his hand painfully, and gave me a roll of paper. I asked him what it was, and what I should do with it, and he tried to tell me; but though his lips moved no articulate sound came from them, and even as I looked at him he heaved a great sigh, and his head fell back, and I knew that he was dead. What I might have done had not my errand been urgent I cannot tell; but since I could do nothing for him I delayed but to compose his huddled limbs, and mounted my horse again, thrusting the paper into my pocket, where it had since lain forgotten. Such things happened often in the lawless and distracted France of that time, so that it is no wonder it went out of my head when I had matters of greater moment to think of. [Illustration: I SAW A MAN LYING IN A HUDDLED HEAP]