"Ha!" said the mayor. "Ha! This is strange, young gentleman! You must be in mighty favor! Why, sir, he has driven back women and children and old men--all starving--from the French lines into this city of famine! You, an Englishman, an enemy,--he show such favor to you! Pah! There must be something under this. Have you no message for me?" "No distinct message, sir," replied Edward: "the cardinal indeed said, in terms so vague that I cannot and will not counsel any reliance upon them, that if Rochelle would submit she should have favorable terms,--as favorable as even I could expect. But I am not his messenger, sir. Neither is there any thing that I know under the plain fact which I have stated." "Let me see your pass," said Guiton, abruptly. Edward handed it to him, and he examined it minutely. "'Edward Langdale and one companion,--to wit, the syndic Clement Tournon'!" he said. "Well, this is marvellous strange! I cannot let this pass without some further knowledge of so unaccountable a matter." "Well, Monsieur Guiton," answered Edward, firmly, "pray remember that I, comparatively, a stranger to him, have perilled much to aid and rescue a man who once showed me kindness, nursed me like a father when I was sick, and trusted me as he would his son when I had recovered; and that it is you--his ancient friend, as I am told--who keep him here to die of famine or of sickness when he can be of no further service either with hand or head. I have done my duty. Probably you think you are doing yours." The mayor waved his hand. "Not so many words," he said. "Can you give me any explanation of this strange matter?" "None," replied Edward, boldly. "Does Clement Tournon wish to leave the city?" demanded the mayor again. "I do not know," replied the young Englishman. "He is old, infirm, and, I am told, sick. I have had no communication with him. But he knows that he can be of no further service in Rochelle, or I believe he would remain in it till the last man died and the last tower fell." "He is sick," said the mayor, "of a very common disease here. But yet we are not so badly off that we cannot maintain the city till the English fleet arrives." "The dyke!" said Edward, emphatically. "Oh," replied Guiton, with a scoffing and unnatural-sounding laugh, "the first storm, such as I have seen many, will sweep that dyke away." "But, if it stands fourteen days," said Edward, "will you not have a storm within these walls which will sweep away the people of Rochelle?" Guiton covered his eyes with his hands and remained silent. "But I have nothing to do with these things, sir," said Edward. "It was only to give aid, to give safety, to a friend, an old noble-minded man who befriended me when I had need of friendship, that I came into Rochelle at all. May I ask what is this sickness that you speak of so lightly?"