The travellers left the driver and a lackey to guard the coach, which remained horsed, and silently followed the sick lady. The dais room, the finest in the inn, was spacious and furnished with a certain amount of luxury; a large fire crackled on the hearth, and several candles, placed on the furniture, diffused a rather bright light. A door half hidden by tapestry communicated with a bedroom, that had a door opening on the passage, for the convenience of the attendants. When the lady had entered the room, she sank into a chair, and thanked the landlady with a bow. The latter discreetly withdrew, astonished and almost terrified by the gloomy faces which surrounded her. "Holy Virgin!" she said to Master Pivois, whom she found walking in great anxiety along the passage, "What's going to happen here? These men frighten me; that poor lady is all of a tremble, and the little I saw of her face behind her mask, is as white as a sheet." "Alas!" Master Pivois said with a sigh, "I am as frightened as you, my dear, but we can do nothing; they are too great people for us--friends of his Eminence. They would crush us without pity; we have only one thing to do, and that is to retire to our room, as we received orders to do, and to keep quiet till our services are required; the house is theirs, at this moment they are the masters." The landlord and his wife went into their room, and not satisfied with double locking their door, barricaded it with everything that came to hand. As Master Pivois had said to his wife, the travellers were certainly masters of the inn, or at least believed themselves so. The stranger, while feigning the deepest indifference, had watched the landlord's every movement: as soon as the latter left the kitchen to open the door for the newcomers, he rose, threw a purse of gold to the scullions, while putting his finger on his lips to recommend silence to them, and carefully wrapping himself in his mantle, left the kitchen. The scullions, with the intelligence characteristic of the class, comprehended that this action of the stranger concealed some plans in the execution of which it was to their interest not to interfere; they divided the money so generously given them, and remembering the orders they had received from their master, they hastily decamped, and went off to hide themselves. The stranger, while the landlord was receiving the travellers, had proceeded to the thickest part of the garden. On reaching the little gate to which we have referred, he whistled gently. Almost immediately two men seemed to rise from the midst of the darkness, and came up to him. Each of these men had a long rapier at his side, pistols in his girdle, and a musketoon in his hand. "What is there new?" the stranger asked; "Have you seen anything, Michael?" "Captain," the man answered, to whom the question was addressed, "I have seen nothing, but still I fear a trap." "A trap?" the stranger repeated.