“Hush,” he whispered. “You can trust me. She is my mother. Hark! The patroon is coming back. Let me warn you hastily. There is distrust here. Do not start whatever you may hear down stairs. Beware, you are treading on a powder mine. Believe me. I am your friend. She is my mother. Let that suffice for reason.” That moment the patroon returned. Louis began helping me to buckle on my sword. In a moment all his rigidity had disappeared and his old manner returned to him. I had no time then to think of the suspicion he had referred to, for the patroon led me down stairs to the dining room at once. As we traversed the corridor for the second time, I could hear Louis’ pattering steps behind us like a faithful dog; and in my mind’s eye I saw his wagging head and bent arms keeping time to his nimble step. As I say, we went below, but had hardly entered the dining room when Mistress Miriam darted into it. She was bonneted, dressed in riding clothes, and her cheeks were flushed with exercise. “Oh, father,” she cried passionately, “Monsieur Le Bourse is dead.” “Dead!” echoed the patroon. At that moment I felt Louis Van Ramm’s fingers close on my wrist like a vise. In an instant he relaxed his grip, for the patroon turned to look at me. “You are pale,” he said abruptly. “You should be hungry.” But of the two, he must have been the paler. However, he would have nothing more to say to me till I had eaten. I was not sorry, for, in very truth, I was as hungry as a bear, and the silence that followed gave me time to think over what had happened. Evidently Louis’s warning and the locking of my door were pieces of the same cloth. No doubt of Louis’s honesty came into my mind. I knew by an experience I had had in France that a deformed person like this dwarf was likely, however vicious he might be at heart, to feel a dog-like attachment to any one who had befriended him. The fact that Meg was his mother was enough to justify my belief in his honesty. I felt now that, beyond peradventure, I might trust in him. But the suspicion he had warned me against—what was that? What could it be but that I was discovered? I recalled the fact that both Lady Marmaduke and Pierre had recognized me. Had the patroon? I confess to trembling at the moment, and I looked up to see if I were noticed. “Your hand trembles,” said the patroon. Trust him for seeing everything that was in sight! “Trembles,” I answered. “Which?” “Your right,” he replied, with a vicious smile on his dark features. I stretched my right hand out before him as steady as his own. “Mere accident,” I said, careful not to show either too much disregard or too much interest in what he had just said. “What made you think so, or did it really tremble for an instant?” “I thought it did, Le Bourse, but I may have been mistaken.”