"Nor of the clothes either!" exclaimed he. "What! wear them with this and this upon them," and he pointed with his finger to the dark stains, and--in some places--to the clean cuts through them from front to back, where sword or lance had passed. "Heavens! they would think I had murdered the previous wearer or stripped some gallows tree."
"But the lace, gnädiger Herr, the lace," whispered one, "the gold galloon. Look to it. See this"; and he held up a gorgeously-faced coat that when new must have cost many score of crowns.
"Nay, I will not have it either. 'Tis tarnished, spoilt--with rain and powder. No lace for me! Now, let us see for the weapons"; and he directed his eyes towards the bundle of swords.
"Ah! the weapons," said Muhlenbein, "the weapons. They are indeed worthy of so great a merchant as, without doubt, the Herr is. Now that one," speaking of a sword which Andrew was examining carefully, "is a noble tool, of splendid steel, a----"
"Tush," said Andrew. "Be silent, man. Did I not tell you last night I know a good sword. Your recommendations are useless."
However, even as he looked at the weapon in his hand he knew that there was no trace of De Bois-Vallée here. This sword had never been his, although it bore a strange resemblance to the one he had used against himself in their encounter; it being the exact length the Vicomte had selected, and with its hilt and handle almost a facsimile of the other. But it had fallen from some Austrian's hand he saw in a moment, and not from the Frenchman's; the knot showed that, while the maker's name stamped into it of "Kraft, Nürnberg," added confirmation.
Still, it was so good a weapon that he was loth not to buy it and strap it up with other things he carried--only it was sheathless; so from this he passed on also--appeasing the men, however, who were now getting very discontented, by purchasing a pair of handsome pistols, after much chaffering.
Then he approached the medallions, while, as he did so, he thought, "If this, which I expect, fails too, I am no nearer than before."
Yet, when he held the trinket in his hand and gazed at it under the light thrown by the window of the loft, he felt sure it was the one on which he had looked as he opened the wounded man's shirt to give him air. The painted face that stared at him from the miniature, set in rose diamonds, was the one he had seen on the man's breast that night--the face of a handsome woman of some forty-five or fifty years of age, a woman with blue eyes and auburn hair, flecked with red.
"Doubtless his mother," Andrew thought. And, recognizing the similarity of the traits of the woman of the medallion and the man he sought, he knew that this was the ornament he had previously seen. Even the links of the gold chain attached to it seemed familiar.