Beaumanoir picked up the card and read: Colonel Anstruther Walcot, 14th Dragoon Guards. The sight of that card, for all his imminent danger, cheered him, as showing that his opponents were not infallible. Not only had they made the initial blunder of furnishing this obvious Yankee with the outward semblance and name of an English officer commanding a distinguished regiment, relying on the fact that the real owner of the name was in India, but they had chanced to select the name of the colonel of Beaumanoir’s old regiment. The impostor’s card inspired him with an idea. He would accept him at his own valuation. "Very well," he said, rising from his chair. "As I am the first comer, perhaps it is right that I should be first served. I’ll take the bedroom, Mayne; but there’s no need to disturb your wife. If you’ll show me up we’ll soon put the room to rights. Good-night, sir, and thank you for your courtesy." With which he signed to the keeper to lead the way and followed him out, casting a glance at the American to see how he took the arrangement. Diagnosis of the man’s face was, however, impossible, for he had already turned to the window and was drawing aside the curtain—to signal to his fellows, Beaumanoir had no doubt. Mayne mounted the steep cottage staircase, Beaumanoir limping awkwardly in his wake into one of two rooms on the tiny landing. The moment they had crossed the threshold he perceived that the chamber was little better than a trap. The man downstairs would simply have him at his mercy, after admitting his companions and probably screwing up the door of the keeper’s sleeping apartment. Locks and bolts to the primitive doors there were none. He recognized all too late that it would have been better to have insisted on the Yankee occupying this room and on remaining downstairs himself, when he would at least have formed a wedge between the traitor in the camp and his colleagues outside. To stay the night in the room was out of the question, and he determined to put in practice the inspiration derived from "Colonel Walcot’s" card. "Mayne," he said, laying his hand on the astonished keeper’s shoulder, "I must get out of this at once, without the gentleman below being aware of it, and you must help me." "But, your Grace——" began Mayne. "Don’t withstand me," Beaumanoir cut short the protest. "I cannot go into a long explanation, but it’s like this. That man is the colonel of my former regiment—an old brother officer, you understand. My name was Hanbury then, and he either does not, or pretends not to, recognize me. It is not a nice thing to have to confess, but I borrowed money in those days from Colonel Walcot, which never till now have I had it in my power to repay. It would distress me greatly to have that money mentioned before I have repaid it, as I shall do to-morrow, so if you can contrive to let me out without his knowledge I’ll make for Prior’s Tarrant and never forget your assistance."