"Why, man," he cried, too astounded at my opposition to take offence, "don't you know you are but a catspaw, and I am here to finish the affair? Come, come, you have cackled your little crow over me, and we are quits--the letter, and waste no time." "Even allowing for the goatherd and scullion," I answered, "I take you for a kind of a gentleman, and so do not say you lie, only, I heard nothing of this at Plessis. On the contrary, His Majesty was quite clear, that which I began I was to finish. Show me your warrant, but I warn you, nothing less than the King's signet and sign manual will move me." For a moment he stood clenching and unclenching his hands before him, too full of passion to find words. Had he not been in his innkeeper's dress, and so without a sword, he would have tried force, so mad with rage was he. Then he turned aside to the window, and stared between the bars into the court where Martin was rubbing down Roland. "You play your game with a high hand, Monsieur," he said at last; "but if you think I have sweated here in the grime all these weeks while you were feasting at Morsigny, just to see you pocket the profits, you don't know your man." But when, with another turn of his heel, he would have stridden past me, I stepped between him and the door. "Monsieur, who shall pay you your wages I do not know, but you are not coming back to stab me unawares and rob me of what the King has committed to my trust. Since you have brought me here to this room, in this room you shall stay until I have read his Majesty's letter. Nor do I see why we should quarrel. If the end of this affair has indeed been committed to you, show me some token? God knows I have no love for the work. You have no token? No warrant? Nothing but your bare word? Then, since you profess to know so much, tell me at least what steps I am next to take, something, anything to prove you are in the King's confidence, and that your bare word is not a bare lie? You cannot? Then tell me this: if you were Gaspard Hellewyl, and I you, how far would you trust the man who came with nothing but a blustering wheedle of words in his mouth? Not a foot! Not an inch! Nor will I. It is my life, Monsieur Tapster-goatherd, it is my honour, and by God! I'll give neither the one nor the other to your keeping. Stand there by the window, Monsieur, and if the King bids me give you the letter, or--or anything else I control except these two, then, on the faith of a gentleman, you shall have it, but not unless." Three times while I spoke I saw No! in his face, though he answered nothing; but as I ended, he half laughed, shrugged his shoulders, and did as he was bidden with a swagger that matched his clothing badly. Who he was, or what his rank, I never knew, but clothes so much make the man that not even the Prince de Talmont himself would in like circumstances have looked anything else than that very ridiculous object--a country inn-keeper in a rage.