"When I forget my compact with Monsieur Mortlake, and show my affection for the great colonel, Thoms is there to menace me with meaning looks; and when I defy his hints and refuse to spy any longer upon my colonel's life, a letter comes from Mortlake quickening me by threats and promises. 'Tis penned, of course, by Thoms, and I never know it then.
"The history of those days you have discovered for yourself, mademoiselle, in that important note-book, which you seized with such high courage.
"Admirable woman! I bend the knee to you, for you rival in valor Joan of Arc. Without your heart of steel and hand of silk, the wary, lying fox might never have been lured from his hole and crushed; and the noble Colonel Brand might have lain forgotten and unavenged.
"Thus I come to the middle of the volume. The stories have met; I take up the ends of them; I twine them together, and, voila! an eclaircissement! When I have run my little race in the ungrateful republic, I come home to England.
"I am free. I have money, health; I have a sacred duty to perform, an insult to avenge; I hasten into England, and seek my principal.
"Ouais! are not the journals teeming with great news? 'The Great Castle Brand Plot meets my astonished eyes in every journal. The vile imposture is divulged, the daring murderer is condemned; his serpentine guile is held up; and with passion I read that my valet Thoms and my employer Mortlake are one. I foam, I sweat with rage and shame, that he should have cheated me.
"Oh, mon Dieu! that I should live to be cheated by Thoms! Why did I not saber him in those days in Virginia?
"I swear that I will have honorable satisfaction; the dog shall die for his treachery to a knight whose honor is more valued than his life.
"I know the old disguise of my Mortlake. I remember his haunts, I say. England, I will find your criminal for you, but I shall have my little account settled with him before I pass him over to you.
"I hasten to Canterbury, where I have seen him first, and in his old haunt, plying his modest profession as gambler, I find my bird-of-the-jail, with the eye upon Paris when tracked to Canterbury, there to hide from angry England.