"Now, my good Jean," said the man, as he let go his hold of the innkeeper, "just go home and keep your tongue quiet--it will be best for you. I shall have an eye on you, and if you blab about what you have seen, why you will stand a good chance of sharing the same fate as your friends yonder. They have been arrested under the king's _lettre de cachet_, and if you meddle in the matter you are a dead man." Half an hour later Monsieur de Crillon received the report of his chief _employe_, which was to the effect that the young marquis had been overheard whilst discovering himself to Jean Perigord, and that he and the young female who had previously reached the "Great Gun" had been seized and conveyed to the prison of Bouffay, where they awaited Monsieur de Crillon's further orders. "Let the horses be got ready and brought round at once," was the reply, and his follower retired to give directions accordingly. In the meanwhile Jean Perigord had returned to his house in dire dismay at what had taken place, and his anxiety was heightened, if that were possible, by the reflection that he had very likely been made the means of decoying poor Marguerite into a trap. He could not help fearing, moreover, that the figure he had seen carried past him and thrown into the boat had been that of the poor young fellow her husband, who had doubtless been captured on the quay as he was landing. Without a thought about closing his house as usual, he threw himself into a chair and groaned aloud. What was he to do? Now he resolved to seek out the Marquis de Beaujardin at the Hotel Turenne; now again he shrank from such a step as he remembered that terrible injunction to keep silence about the matter. He was, however, suddenly aroused from his rueful reflections by the sound of hasty footsteps in the passage, and had scarcely had time to rise from his chair when there stood before him a young man, in the garb of a peasant indeed, but whose face and figure, to say nothing of his language and manner, were little in accordance with his homely apparel. "You will be glad to hear, honest Jean," said he, "that I have managed it all, and have succeeded in taking passages in a ship that sails to-morrow morning. I must go and bring down my poor young wife at once, as I have kept my boat waiting to take us off to the ship. I can never repay you for your kindness, but----" Here he stopped short, and then added in some surprise: "How now, my good friend! you look as if you had seen a ghost." That was, indeed, just what Jean himself was thinking at that moment. "Heaven have mercy on us!" he ejaculated. "Is it you? It cannot be."