"But are they men to trust?" demanded Chanot, with a sharp suspicion. A man of the country and an ex-cavalryman might account for Chardon and himself in that wild country and no one be any the wiser. Besides, who would trouble themselves about the fate of a couple of fleeing outlaws? "They are as good as you will get," said Chardon, "and we shall be more than their match in any case. They cannot get the boat without you, and without a boat on the coast of Les Saintes a man is like an eel in a trap. He can get in but he cannot get out." CHAPTER XXXVIII THE LAST ADVENTURE OF THE BLACK BAND The last hours of the Black Band in Aramon were marked by many exploits still remembered in the town. Citizens, even men marked for their former devotion to the cause of the workmen, were stopped in the streets and relieved of all they had about them, to their very watches and chains. Shopkeepers were given the alternative of executing an immediate forced loan or having their premises burnt over their heads. Some, running too complacently to the hiding-places of their wealth, found themselves despoiled of all. The two banks were threatened and squeezed alternately. A poll-tax was levied on the population and exacted at the point of the bayonet. Underground reaction growled and raged in Aramon, and if the Committee of Public Safety had remained a few days more, it is likely that they would have found themselves hunted and shot like mad dogs. But they had no such intentions. They acted precisely as does a fraudulent bankrupt who lays his hand on every shilling in preparation for an immediate flight. They did not intend ever to set eyes on Aramon again, and they cared nothing for the dissatisfaction caused by their last measures of rapacity. But the favour accorded to Matteo le Gaucher by the chief of the band at the Mairie had not escaped the notice of his compatriots. The little hunchback one day appeared sunning himself on the bridge wall, with his wrist displaying a gold bangle, which everyone recognised as that which had been worn by Chanot. Instantly the quick Italian suspicions were aroused--and in all Italy none are so silent and shrewd as the men of Tuscany. But though they tried this way and that for a good clue, they were beaten. All they could learn was that Le Gaucher was in the pay of the Bad Men, and that boded no good to their master. So, because they were fond of the big, slow-moving, kindly man, they went back and told him. Arcadius served out a litre of wine apiece to mark his sense of their good-will, but as for any danger from Matteo, he merely shrugged his shoulders. But Arcadius, as he moved in his garden with his dainty mattock in his hand, and in his pocket his garden-scissors, which were strong enough to cut through a branch the thickness of his own thumb, had a vast deal of time for thinking. And generally Arcadius thought to some purpose.