"You are waiting for some one here?" "Yes." "I, also." "Ah!" "Comrade, have you been waiting long?" "For three hours at least." "Comrade," replied the captain, after a moment's silence, "would you like to make double the sum they give you for following me and spying me?" "I do not know what you mean. I do not follow you, sir. I am not spying you." "Yes." "No." "Let us end this. I will give you what you want if you will go on your way,--stop, I have the gold in my pocket." And the captain tingled the gold in his vest pocket, and said: "I have twenty-five or thirty louis--" "_Hein!_" said the man, with a singularly insinuating manner, "twenty-five or thirty louis?" At this moment a distant clock sounded half-past seven o'clock. Almost at the same instant a guttural cry, resembling a call or a signal, was heard in the direction that the man in the blouse had first taken to join the two sailors. The spy made a movement as if he understood the significance of this cry, and for a moment seemed undecided. "Half-past seven o'clock," said the captain to himself. "That beggar there is not alone." Having made this reflection, he coughed. Scarcely had the captain coughed, when the spy felt himself seized vigorously at the ankles by some one who had thrown himself suddenly between his legs. He fell backwards, but in falling he had time to cry with a loud voice: "Here, John, run to the--" He was not able to finish. Sans-Plume, after having thrown him down, had unceremoniously taken a seat on the breast of the spy, and, holding him by the throat, prevented his speaking. "The devil! do not strangle him," said the captain, who, kneeling down, was binding securely with his silk handkerchief the two legs of the indiscreet busybody. "The bag, captain," said Sans-Plume, keeping his grip on the throat of the spy, "the bag! it is large enough to wrap his head and arms; we will bind him tight around the loins and he will not budge any more than a roll of old canvas." No sooner said than done. In a few seconds the spy, cowled like a monk in the bag to the middle of his body, with his legs bound, found himself unable to move. Sans-Plume had the courtesy to push his victim into one of the wide verdant slopes which separated the trees, and nothing more was heard from that quarter but an interrupted series of smothered bellowings. "The alarm will be given at the convent! Half-past seven has just struck," said the captain to his sailor. "We must risk all now or all is lost!" "In twice three movements the thing is ready, captain," replied Sans-Plume, running with his companion toward the large trees which hung over the wall near which they had at first stood. CHAPTER III.