made no direct reply, but saying that he would not fail to be at the
appointed place at nine that evening, took his leave.

"Truly, Master Guy, I began to be uneasy about you," Robert Picard said
when he rejoined him, "and was meditating whether I had best enter the
tent, and demand what had become of you. It was only the thought that
there might have been others before you, and that you had to wait your
turn before seeing him, that restrained me. You have not been taking his
nostrums, I trust; for they say that some of those men sell powders by
which a man can be changed into a wolf."

Guy laughed. "I have taken nothing, Robert, and if I had I should have no
fear of such a change happening to me. I have but talked to the man as to
how he came to know me, and it is as I thought,--he saw us as we entered.
He is a shrewd fellow, and may well be of some use to us."

"I like not chaffering with men who have intercourse with the devil,"
Picard said, shaking his head gravely; "nothing good comes of it. My
mother knew a man who bought a powder that was to cure his wife of
jealousy; and indeed it did, for it straightway killed her, and he was
hung. I think that I can stand up against mortal man as well as another,
but my blood ran cold when I saw you enter yon tent, and I fell into a
sweat at your long absence."

"The man is not of that kind, Robert, so you can reassure yourself. I
doubt not that the nostrums he sells are perfectly harmless, and that
though they may not cure they will certainly not kill."

They made their way back to the house of the provost of the silversmiths.