"No, Monsieur, not for your gold," and the woman of the wine shop shamed my thought. "Good-night, Monsieur." She kissed my hand, and drew back into the darkness.
I turned hastily down the street, but had not made more than the distance of three rods when I heard a scream, and looking back saw two men dragging Florine back into the street.
"Which way did he go?" Yvard demanded fiercely.
She made no reply.
"Speak quick or I'll kill you as I would a hare."
Still she kept her tongue.
"She makes time for her lover, Carne," the other man suggested, and as I feared he would strike, I called out loudly to them:
"Here he is," to draw them off from the girl.
They dropped her at once and started in my direction. I ran on ahead, yet at a disadvantage, for I knew not where to go, knowing, too, that I could not fight them both. Yet more than all I dreaded falling into the hands of the city guard with the papers I had upon me. I ran under a street lamp, and taking up a position some twenty feet beyond in the dark, waited. The knife for one, the sword for the other, was my thought. Holding my long sword in my left hand, I swung my right free, and catching my knife by its point, stood my ground. The younger man was swifter, yet seemed afraid to lead Yvard. So they passed under the lamp side by side.
Selecting Yvard as my mark, I made a quick cast, and had the satisfaction of seeing my knife glitter as it struck him full in the shoulder, and bury itself well to the hilt. It was a trick I had learned from the Indians, and it had not been lost.