"Yes; take him away!" With a querulous gesture his Excellency put an end to the matter. "Am I to be interrupted in important affairs by every miserable _farceur_, or buffoon, you pick up on the beach? To the devil with the fellow!" When the door had closed on the mountebank and the commandant, he turned to his daughter. "A madcap trick!" Frowningly his Excellency regarded her. "To have gone into the town and mingled with the rabble! But," shaking his head and then suffering that expression of disapproval to relax into severity, "say no more about it! Here," indicating the letter, "is something of greater moment, to be attended to and answered!" CHAPTER XX THE MOUNTEBANK AND THE SOLDIER As the mountebank walked out of the apartment of the Governor's daughter, he drew himself up with an air of expectancy, like a man preparing for some sudden climax. Once beyond the threshold, his eyes glanced furtively back at the closed door, and, descending the stairs to the floor below, he carried his head a little forward, as if intent to catch unwonted sound or outcry. But no raised voice or unusual noise reached his ear, and his footsteps, as the party issued forth into the street, responded briskly to the soldiers' pace. Still with the same air of strained attention, now mingled with a trace of perplexity, he followed his guard until called upon to stop. "You are to sleep here!" As he spoke, the commandant opened the door of what seemed a low out-building, not very far from the general barracks, and motioned the mountebank to enter. The latter, after glancing quickly at the speaker and the soldiers behind, bent to step across the dark threshold, and, still stooping, on account of the low roof, looked around him. By the faint glimmer of light from a lantern one of the soldiers held, the few details of that squalid place were indistinctly revealed: A single stall whose long-eared occupant turned its head inquiringly at the abrupt appearance of a companion lodger; bits of harness and a number of traps hanging from pegs on the wall, and, near the door, on the ground, a bundle of grass, rough fodder from the marshes close by the shore. This last salt-smelling heap, the officer, peering in with a fastidious sniff, indicated. "That's your bed! A softer one than you would have had but for the Lady Elise!" The prisoner returned no answer, and in the voice of a man whose humor was not of the best, the commandant uttered a brief command. A moment or two the light continued to pass fitfully about the stable; then it and the moving shadows vanished; a key grated in the door, and the sound of the officer's receding footsteps was followed by the diminishing clatter of men's heels on the flagging stone. Not until both had fairly died away in the distance and the silence was broken only by certain indications of restiveness from the stall, did the prisoner move.