For three or four days the search went on, those whom he had loved so aiding it in every way. Archibald, stern, silent, inwardly crushed; Bertie mad with grief and despair; Kate broken-hearted. The lower parts of the city were ransacked and received visits from the watch and the exempts, but nothing came of it except great discomfort to the denizens thereof. Nothing! And--which perhaps was not strange--never to one of those who had so loved him came the veriest shadow of a thought as to who the murderer was. It was not possible, indeed, that such a thought should come. He, they imagined--if ever in their sorrow they let his foul memory enter their mind--was in England. No, they never dreamt of him. They began, therefore, at last to think, as all the world which went to make up Amiens thought, that some of the outcasts, the thieves and scoundrels who had visited the city at fair-time, had taken his bright young life. Yet, strange to say, if such were the case, he had not been robbed. His pocketbook was on him, his purse untouched. There was little enough in either, it was true, yet, the night-birds would have had them had they been his slayers! Then, at last, it seemed that the murderers were caught. There rode up to the south gate, on the fifth day, a sergeant and three troopers of the Regiment Picardy, and with them they had--bound with rope;--two villainous-looking scoundrels, fellows in stained and tawdry riding coats, with brandy-inflamed faces, one having a broken leg, so that as he sat on his horse he groaned with every movement it made. The sergeant's story was brief and soon told to the captain of the guard, while Bertie Elphinston, summoned to hear it, stood by hollow-eyed and sad, wondering if he was to learn that in these swashbucklers he saw the assassins of his poor friend.