"No, worshipful sir!" amid a storm of sobs. "No, no! Indeed no! And how was I to know? There was naught but that in the box, and who would think treason lay in a——"
"Mischief lay in it!"
"In a bottle!"
"And treason," Blondel thundered, drowning his last word, "for aught you knew! Who are you to judge where treason lies, or may lie? Oh, pig, dog, fool," he continued, carried away by a fresh paroxysm of rage, at the thought that he had had it in his grasp and let it go! "If I could score your back!" And he brandished his cane.
"You have scored his face pretty fairly," Baudichon muttered. "To score his back too——"
"Were nothing for the offence! Nothing! As you would say if you knew it," Blondel panted.
"Indeed?"
"Ay."
"Then I would like to know it. What is it he has done?"
"He has left undone that which he was ordered to do," Blondel answered more soberly than he had yet spoken. He had recovered something of his power to reason. "That is what he has done. But for his default we should at this moment be in a position to seize Basterga."