The room was dark when the door opened and Mercier entered.
"Monsieur, will you follow me?"
Barrington sprang to his feet at once.
"Monsieur will have been told by Citizen Latour that he is to do as I direct."
"I am so tired of these walls that a journey to the Place de la Revolution would be almost welcome."
Mercier carried a lantern, and, after locking the door of the cell, he led Barrington by the same way that he and Seth had taken. They passed through the trapdoor into the cellar, and from there into the passage of the house.
"This way," said Mercier, opening a door which gave on to a dark alleyway covered in but apparently joining one house to another. Barrington did not stop to ask himself questions, to consider whether it was wise to trust this man. At the end of this alley Mercier opened another door, and they entered a room barely furnished, and dimly lighted. Two men rose quickly from seats beside a stove, and one came forward with a glad cry.
"Master Richard! Master Richard! I thought they'd been lying to me. I thought you were dead. Thank God for the sight of your face again."
Their hands clasped and were held tightly, as men who are comrades yet do not speak of it much.
"I've been lying in some cellar underneath here with the wits out of me," said Seth. "Now we're to take a journey, though I cannot worm out of these gentlemen where to. It doesn't matter much so long as we are together."