worse for you. There be those who can tell me what I desire to know. As
for you, I shall deliver you to the Provost-Sergeant, who will need no
words from me to tell him how to deal with you. I ask you, is Michael
Lempriere in correspondence with Henry Dumaresq?"

"_Palfrancordi!_ Messire; you press me hard," said the prisoner, but his
eye was scarcely that of a pressed man. "When you examined me a week ago
in secret I think I answered that. I know of no letters that have passed
between M. de Samarès and M. de Maufant. That is," he added hastily, as
the Governor began to look impatient, "I have carried none myself."

"Who has?" asked the Governor.

The Greffier, at a signal from Carteret, plunged his pen into the ink;
the halberdiers shifted their legs and leaned upon their weapons; the
prisoner moistened his lips with his tongue.

"Speak, Benoist; who carried the letters?"

"It was Alain Le Gallais," answered Pierre in a low voice.

"It was Alain Le Gallais? Write, Master Greffier, the prisoner says that
the letters were carried by one Alain Le Gallais. You are sure of that,
Benoist?"

"As sure as my name is Peter." A cock crew in the yard of the castle.
The coincidence did not seem to strike any of the party in the room.

"By what route did Le Gallais go?"