On his bed lay d'Estreicher gagged and safely bound to it. His eyes were rolling wildly. He was groaning.
Beside him lay the muffler which Dorothy had described as belonging to the man who was engaged in making excavations.
On the table, well in sight, lay the sapphire earrings.
But a terrifying, overwhelming sight met the eyes of all three of them simultaneously—the irrefutable proof of the murder of Jean d'Argonne and the theft of the medal. His right arm, bare, was stretched out across the bed, fastened by the wrist. And on that arm they read, tattooed:
In robore fortuna.
[CHAPTER VI]
ON THE ROAD
Every day, at the easy walk or slack trot of One-eyed Magpie, Dorothy's Circus moved on. In the afternoon they gave their performance; after it they strolled about those old towns of France, the picturesque charm of which appealed so strongly to the young girl. Domfront, Mortain, Avranches, Fougères, Vitré, feudal cities, girdled in places by their fortifications, or bristling with their ancient keeps.... Dorothy visited them with all the emotion of a creature who understands the past and evokes it with a passionate enthusiasm.
She visited them alone, even as she walked alone along the high roads, with so manifest a desire to keep to herself that the others, while watching her with anxious eyes and silently begging for a glance from their little mother, did not speak a word to her.
That lasted a week, a very dull week for the children. The pale Saint-Quentin walked at the head of One-eyed Magpie as he would have walked at the head of a horse drawing a hearse. Castor and Pollux fought no longer. As for the captain he buried himself in the perusal of his lesson-books and wore himself out over addition and subtraction, knowing that Dorothy, the school-mistress of the troupe, as a rule deeply appreciated these fits of industry. His efforts were vain. Dorothy was thinking of something else.