Sir Isumbras at the Ford

by D. K. Broster

"I trust your charge is recovered!" said he ingratiatingly. "A most interesting child!"

"Thank you," replied the other rather coldly, as he returned to his place; "my nephew was merely overtired." And he ordered coffee, while La Vireville secretly studied him. He looked, thought the Chouan, a person who could neither be bullied nor flustered, a man in whose veins ran some unusually cold liquid. How was he to get him out of the way? Besides, was it certain that the little boy with him was Anne-Hilarion? That he must know.

Absorbed in these speculations he paid scant attention to the conclusion of the Ode, which its author had the obligingness to read again for his benefit and for that of the returned guest, who drank his coffee very slowly, but appeared to be interested in neither of his companions. And before very long the Citizen Pourcelles, seeing no fresh worlds to conquer, drifted out, followed, after a moment's hesitation, by La Vireville, who buttonholed him at the door of the hostelry, to say that he could not let him go without thanking him for the pleasure which he had afforded him.

A very little of this balm, dexterously applied, sufficed to get out of the poet a description of the little boy upstairs sufficiently detailed to satisfy La Vireville that he was indeed Anne-Hilarion.

And then, Mathieu having at last taken his departure, La Vireville was left at the door of the inn, revolving plans. It was tempting to go upstairs now, while the man was below, and (if he could find the right room) slip out of the place with the child. But he would be tracked at once. No plan was sound which did not provide, somehow, for the disposal of Anne's captor. La Vireville was not in the least inclined to boggle at the idea of putting a knife into that gentleman if an opportunity occurred; the difficulty was less to provide that opportunity than to get rid of the ensuing corpse. To go in and quarrel with the man would only lead to tumult and imprisonment. Yet if he delayed and followed the two to-morrow, waiting for fortune to smile upon him, they would all three, with every hour, be nearing Paris and leaving the coast farther behind them, and adding thereby to the length and risk of the return journey.

At any rate he would, he decided, stay at the inn for the night, that is, unless Anne and his 'uncle' were proceeding.

"I want a quiet room," he said to the patron. "You can give me one at the back if you choose." And, the apartment in question being shown to him, he further expressed a hope that there was no one near who would come late to bed and disturb him.

"There is no other guest in the Hôtel du Faisan," replied the landlord, "but the citizen downstairs and his little nephew, and they sleep in Number Nine, which is at the other end of the corridor, as you see. And probably the citizen will retire to bed early, because of the child."

"Tiresome," commented the émigré, "to share a room with a child, and to have to regulate your hours of repose accordingly."

"That," said the landlord, with a slightly offended air, "is not really necessary in this case. Number Nine has an inner room opening out of it."