'You speak English well,' observed my visitor.

'It has been a second language to me from a child,' said I. 'I had
an English nurse; my father spoke English with me; and I was
finished by a countryman of yours and a dear friend of mine, a Mr.
Vicary.'

A strong expression of interest came into the lawyer's face.

'What!' he cried, 'you knew poor Vicary?'

'For more than a year,' said I; 'and shared his hiding-place for
many months.'

'And I was his clerk, and have succeeded him in business,' said he.
'Excellent man! It was on the affairs of M. de Keroual that he
went to that accursed country, from which he was never destined to
return. Do you chance to know his end, sir?'

'I am sorry,' said I, 'I do. He perished miserably at the hands of
a gang of banditti, such as we call chauffeurs. In a word, he was
tortured, and died of it. See,' I added, kicking off one shoe, for
I had no stockings; 'I was no more than a child, and see how they
had begun to treat myself.'

He looked at the mark of my old burn with a certain shrinking.
'Beastly people!' I heard him mutter to himself.

'The English may say so with a good grace,' I observed politely.