'In the wars?' I exclaimed. 'What do you mean?' And I stared at him; waiting, with one knee and one foot on the ground for his answer.
He pointed to my cloak. I looked down, and saw to my surprise a great slit in it--a clean cut in the stuff, a foot long. For a moment I looked at the slit, wondering stupidly and trying to remember how I could have done it. Then a sudden flash, of intelligence entered my mind, and with a dreadful pang of terror, I thrust my hand into my pouch. The chain was gone!
I sprang to my feet. I tore off the pouch and peered into it. I shook my clothes like one possessed. I stooped and searched the ground where I had lain. But all fruitlessly. The chain was gone!
As soon as I knew this for certain, I turned on Jacob, and seizing him by the throat, shook him to and fro. 'Wretch!' I said. 'You have slept! You have slept and let us be robbed! You have ruined me!'
He gurgled out a startled denial, and the others came round us and got him from me. But my outcry had roused all our part of the camp; even my lady put her head out of the tent and asked what was the matter. Some one told her.
'That is bad,' she said kindly. 'What is it you have lost, Martin?'
Over her shoulder I saw a pale face peer out--Marie Wort's; and on the instant I felt my rage die down into a miserable chill, the chill of despair.
'Seven ducats,' I said sullenly, looking down at the ground, for the truth, at sight of her, crushed me. I was a thief! This had made me one. Who was I to cry out that I was robbed?
'It must be one of the strangers,' my lady said in a low voice and with an air of disturbance. 'Do you----'
I sprang away without waiting to hear more--they must have thought me mad. I tore to the spot where I had diced the night before. Three or four men sat round the fire, swearing and grumbling, as is the manner of their kind in the morning; but the man I wanted was not among them.