But Blaise looked none the less gloomy. "There is yet time for evil to come of this journey, my captain," he said gravely. I now made haste to finish my meal, that I might go down into the kitchen ere the lady in the brown robe should depart. Presently, Blaise, glancing out of the window, exclaimed, "The devil! We are not yet rid of our friends! There is one of them, at least!" I looked out and saw two mounted gentlemen, one of whom was Montignac, the governor's secretary, who had ridden back. The other, with whom he was talking in low tones, and with an air of authority, was a man of my own age, dressed in the shabby remains of rich clothes. His face showed the marks of dissipation, and had a cynical, daredevil look. Now and then a sarcastic smile broke suddenly over the handsome and once noble features. "I have seen that man, somewhere, before," said I to Blaise. While I stood searching my memory, and the man sat talking to Montignac, both having stopped their horses in front of the inn, there tramped up, from the South, four other travellers, all of a kind very commonly seen on the highways, in those days of frequent war. They were ragged soldiers of fortune, out at elbows, red of cheek and nose, all having the same look of brow-beating defiance, ready to turn, in a moment, into abject servility. The foremost of these was a big burly fellow with a black beard, and a fierce scowl. As he came up towards the gentleman with whom Montignac was talking, there suddenly came on me a sense of having once, in the dim past, been in strangely similar circumstances to those in which I was now. Once, long ago, had I not looked out in danger from a place of concealment upon a meeting of those two men before an inn? The burly rascal saluted the mounted gentleman, saying, in a coarse, strident voice: "At your service, M. le Vicomte de Berquin." "Know your place, Barbemouche!" was the quick reply. "I am talking with a gentleman." Then I remembered the morning after my flight from Paris, seven years before. Montignac's reckless-looking companion had been the gay gentleman going north, at whom I had looked from an inn shed. The other was the man who had afterwards chased me southward at the behest of the Duke of Guise. But he no longer wore on his hat the white cross of Lorraine, and the Vicomte de Berquin's apparel was no longer gay and spotless. The two had doubtless fallen on hard ways. Both showed the marks of reverses and hard drinking. Barbemouche's sword was, manifestly, no longer in the pay of the Duke of Guise, but was ready to serve the first bidder. Barbemouche shrugged his shoulders at De Berquin's reproof, and led his three sorry-looking companions to a bench in front of the inn, where they searched their pockets for coin before venturing to cross the threshold.