The pair were silent for an instant, looking at each other with something
like dismay upon their faces, and their minds were evidently busy with
old days and old dangers.
Passepoil broke the silence. "They didn't make much by their
blood-money."
"Yes," said Cocardasse; "but we, who refused to hunt Lagardere, we are
alive."
Passepoil cast a melancholy glance over his own dingy habiliments and
then over the garments of Cocardasse, garments which, although glowing
enough in color, were over-darned and over-patched to suggest opulence.
"In a manner," he said, dryly.
Cocardasse drew himself up proudly and slapped his chest. "Poor but
honest."
Passepoil allowed a faint smile, expressive of satisfaction, to steal
over his melancholy countenance. "Thank Heaven, in Paris we can't meet
Lagardere."
Cocardasse appeared plainly to share the pleasure of his old friend. "An
exile dare not return," he said, emphatically, with the air of a man who
feels sure of himself and of his words. But it is the way of destiny very
often, even when a man is surest of himself and surest of his words, to
interpose some disturbing factor in his confident calculations, to make
some unexpected move upon the chess-board of existence, which altogether
baffles his plans and ruins his hopes. So many people had crossed the
bridge that morning that it really seemed little less than probable that
the appearance of a fresh pedestrian upon its arch could have any serious
effect upon the satisfactory reflections of the two bravos. Yet at that
moment a man did appear upon the bridge, who paused and surveyed
Cocardasse and Passepoil, whose backs were towards him, with a
significant smile.
The new-comer was humbly clad, very much in the fashion of one of those
gypsies who had pitched their camp so close to the wayside tavern; but if
the man's clothes were something of the gypsy habit, he carried a sword
under his ragged mantle, and it was plain from the man's face that he was
not a gypsy. His handsome, daring, humorous face, bronzed by many suns
and lined a little by many experiences--a face that in its working
mobility and calm inscrutability might possibly have been the countenance
of a strolling player--was the face of a man still in the prime of life,
and carrying his years as lightly as if he were still little more than a
lad. He moved noiselessly from the bridge to the high-road, and came
cautiously upon the swashbucklers at the very moment when Passepoil was
saying, with a shiver: "I'm always afraid to hear Lagardere's voice cry
out Nevers's motto."
Even on the instant the man in the gypsy habit pushed his way between the
two bandits, laying a hand on each of their shoulders and saying three
words: "I am here!"
Cocardasse and Passepoil fell apart, each with the same cry in the same
amazed voice.
"Lagardere!" said Cocardasse, and his ruddy face paled.
"Lagardere!" said Passepoil, and his pale face flushed.
As for Lagardere, he laughed heartily at their confusion. "You are like
scared children whose nurse hears bogey in the chimney."
Cocardasse strove to seem amused. "Children!" he said, with a forced
laugh, and it was with a forced laugh that Passepoil repeated the word
"Bogey."
For a moment the good-humor faded from the face of Lagardere, and he
spoke grimly enough: "There were nine assassins in the moat at Caylus.
How many are left now?"
"Only three," Cocardasse answered.