"I think--Francis Bakocz! Now take me to the room." To the White Knight came Francis. "Monsieur," he said to Wenzel, "I want to become one of your lieutenants." "Lieutenants! Who told you I have assistants?" Curtly the words were hurled at him through the dark, and Francis started with surprise. The mysterious White Knight's voice was hard and cruel. "No one," he faltered; "but there is yourself, and Monsieur Terhune, and I believed there might be others." "Why should you believe so?" "I--I---- Monsieur, I do not understand you! I imagined what I did because the escapes you arranged were so wonderful, so marvellous. It seemed to me that you must have many more to aid you. Do you not want me to--to--speak thus?" Wenzel laughed grimly. "I questioned you to discover whether they were your ideas or some you might have heard." "They were my own," Francis said quickly. "No one knows anything of you, though we often discuss you when Monsieur Terhune is away," he admitted frankly. "And you think I am a supernatural being?" "Almost, monsieur! My father, for instance! When that hideous brute of a jailer was put to guard him he gave up all hope. Only you, monsieur, could have got the better of that monster." There was a brief silence, broken eventually by Wenzel: "You think so?" "I am certain of it," replied Francis, with boyish enthusiasm. "From what my father says of the jailer the man must have been an ogre. Ugh! the very description of him makes the ladies shudder." He laughed slightly. "Father's description might be that of the missing link. If ever he and I meet I shall kill him for all he did to my father." Again a silence, so long that Francis could not maintain his composure. "Monsieur!" he said. "Go, go!" Wenzel spoke in a muffled voice. "I will let you know if you can help me. Only go now, and tell Terhune to come to me in ten minutes' time." The boy went, and Wenzel was left to thoughts which seared and blistered. "The missing link!" He, who had once been handsome, who could have once looked at himself in the mirror, and been satisfied with its reflection of healthy, youthful virility, now "an ogre"! Not even could he pretend to himself that his ugliness had been exaggerated in the Count's eyes by the ghastly surrounding of the prison, the apparent cruelty of the jailer. He was not blind; there were times when he was himself appalled by the picture thrown at him out of the looking-glass. Yet the hurt of Francis' words, though they cut deep into his sensibilities, did not compare with the mental pain of his own thoughts. If a man thought that of him, what would be a woman's feelings, how much worse would be the reaction on the more fragile ideals of a young girl?