"It is more probable," replied the count, "that he is coming here to
ascertain that fact. What the abbe has heard, another may hear, though he
would not learn it from the abbe. If you want a secret kept, tell it to a
priest, and of all priests, the Abbe Susini. Some one has heard that you
are here in Corsica, and is creeping up to the castle to find out."

"And I will go and find him out. Two can play at that game in the
bushes," said Lory, with a laugh.

"If you go, take a gun; one can never tell how a game may turn."

"Yes; I will take a gun if you wish it." And Lory went towards the door.
"No," he said, pausing in answer to a gesture made by his father, "not
that one. It is of too old a make."

And he went out of the room, leaving his father holding in his hand the
gun with which he had shot Andrei Perucca thirty years before. He stood
looking at the closed door with dim, reflective eyes. Then he looked at
the gun, which he set slowly back in its corner.

"It seems," he said to himself, "that I am of too old a make also."

He went to the window, and, opening it cautiously, stood looking down
into the valley. There he perceived that, though two may play at the same
game, it is usually given to one to play it better than the other. For he
who was climbing up the hill might be followed by a careful eye, by the
chance displacement of a twig, the bending of a bough; while Lory,
creeping down into the valley, remained quite invisible, even to his
father, upon whose memory every shadow was imprinted.