The Man in Black

It was a vile, evil-smelling place they entered, divided into six or eight stalls by wooden partitions reaching half-way to the tiles. A horn lantern hung at each end filled it with yellow lights and deep shadows. A pony raised its head and whinnied as the men entered, but most of the stalls were empty, or tenanted only by drunken clowns sleeping in the straw.

"You cannot lock him in here," said the stranger, looking round him.

The showman grunted. "Cannot I?" he said. "There are tricks in all trades, master. I reckon I can-with this!" And producing from somewhere about him a thin steel chain, he held it before the other's face. "That is my lock and door," he said triumphantly.

"It won't hold him long," the other answered impassively. "The fifth link from the end is worn through now."

"You have sharp eyes!" the showman exclaimed, with reluctant admiration. "But it will hold a bit yet. I fasten him in yonder corner. Do you wait here, and I will come back to you."

He was not long about it. When he returned he led the stranger into the farthest of the stalls, which, as well as that next to it, was empty. "We can talk here," he said bluntly. "At any rate, I have no better place. The house is full. Now, what is it?"

"I want that boy," the tall man answered. The showman laughed-stopped laughing-laughed again. "I dare say you do," he said derisively. "There is not a better or a pluckier boy on the rope out of Paris. And for patter? There is nothing on the road like the bit he did this afternoon, nor a bit that pays as well."

"Who taught it him?" the stranger asked.

"I did."

"That is a lie," the other answered in a perfectly unmoved tone. "If you like I will tell you what you did. You taught him the latter half of the story. The other he knew before: down to the word 'province.'"

The showman gasped. "Diable!" he muttered. "Who told you?"

"Never mind. You bought the boy. From whom?"

"From some gypsies at the great fair of Beaucaire," the showman answered sullenly.

"Who is he?"

Crafty Eyes laughed dryly. "If I knew I should not be padding the hoof," he said. "Or, again, he may be nobody, and the tale patter. You have heard as much as I have. What do you think?"

"I think I shall find out when I have bought the boy," the stranger answered coolly. "What will you take for him?"

The showman gasped again. "You come to the point," he said.

"It is my custom. What is his price?"

The showman's imagination had never soared beyond nor his ears ever heard of a larger sum than a thousand crowns. He mentioned it trembling. There might be such a sum in the world.

"A thousand livres, if you like. Not a sou more," was the answer.

The nearer lantern threw a strong light on Crafty Eyes' face; but that was mere shadow beside the light of cupidity which sparkled in his eyes. He could get another boy; scores of boys. But a thousand livres! A thousand livres! "Tournois!" he said faintly. "Livres Tournois!" In his wildest moments of avarice he had never dreamed of possessing such a sum.

"No, Paris livres," the stranger answered coldly. "Paid to-morrow at the Golden Chariot. If you agree, you will deliver the boy to me there at noon, and receive the money."

The showman nodded, vanquished by the mere sound of the sum. Paris livres let it be. Danae did not more quickly succumb to the golden shower.

CHAPTER II

SOLOMON NÔTREDAME

A little later that night, at the hour which saw the showman pay his second visit to the street before the Chariot d'Or, there to stand gaping at the lighted windows, and peering into the courtyard in a kind of fascination-or perhaps to assure himself that the house would not fly away, and his golden hopes with it-the twelve-year-old boy, the basis of those hopes, awoke and stirred restlessly in the straw. He was cold, and the chain galled him. His face ached where the man had struck him. In the next stall two drunken men were fighting, and the place reeked with oaths and foulness. But none of these things were so novel as to keep the boy awake; and sighing and drawing the monkey nearer to him, he would in a moment have been asleep again if the moon, shining with great brightness through the little square aperture above him, had not thrown its light directly on his head, and roused him more completely.

He sat up and gazed at it, and God knows what softening thoughts and pitiful recollections the beauty of the night brought into his mind; but presently he began to weep-not as a child cries, with noise and wailing, but in silence, as a man weeps. The monkey awoke and crept into his breast, but he hardly regarded it. The misery, the hopelessness, the slavery of his life, ignored from hour to hour, or borne at other times with a boy's nonchalance, filled his heart to bursting now. Crouching in his lair in the straw, he shook with agony. The tears welled up, and would not be restrained, until they hid the face of the sky and darkened even the moon's pure light.

Or was it his tears? He dashed them away and looked, and rose slowly to his feet; while the ape, clinging to his breast, began to mow and gibber. A black mass, which gradually resolved itself, as the boy's eyes cleared, into a man's hat and head, filled the aperture.

"Hush!" came from the head in a cautious whisper. "Come nearer. I will not hurt you. Do you wish to escape, lad?"

The boy clasped his hands in an ecstasy. "Yes, oh yes!" he murmured. The question chimed in so naturally with his thoughts, it scarcely surprised him.

"If you were loose, could you get through this window?" the man asked. He spoke cautiously, under his breath; but the noise in the next stall, to say nothing of a vile drinking song which was being chanted forth at the farther end of the stable, was such he might safely have shouted. "Yes? Then take this file. Rub at the fifth link from the end: the one that is nearly through. Do you understand, boy?"

"Yes, yes," Jehan cried again, groping in the straw for the tool, which had fallen at his feet. "I know."

"When you are loose, cover up the chain," continued the other in a slow biting tone. "Or lie on that part of it, and wait until morning. As soon as you see the first gleam of light, climb out through the window. You will find me outside."

The boy would have uttered his trembling thanks. But lo! in a moment the aperture was clear again; the moon sailed unchanged through an unchanged sky; and all was as before. Save for the presence of the little bit of rough steel in his hand, he might have thought it a dream. But the file was there; it was there, and with a choking sob of hope and fear and excitement, he fell to work on the chain.

It was clumsy work he made of it in the dark. But the link was so much worn, a man might have wrenched it open, and the boy did not spare his fingers. The dispute next door covered the song of the file; and the smoky horn lantern which alone lighted that end of the stable had no effect in the dark corner where he lay. True, he had to work by feel, looking out all the while for his tyrant's coming; but the tool was good, and the fingers, hardened by many an hour of work on the rope, were strong and lithe. When the showman at last stumbled to his place in the straw, the boy lay free-free and trembling.

All was not done, however. It seemed an hour before the man settled himself-an hour of agony and suspense to Jehan, feigning sleep; since at any moment his master might take it into his head to look into things. But Crafty Eyes had no suspicion. Having kicked the boy and heard the chain rattle, and so assured himself that he was there-so much caution he exercised every night, drunk or sober-he was satisfied; and by-and-by, when his imagination, heated by thoughts of wealth, permitted it, he fell asleep, and dreamed that he had married the Cardinal's cook-maid and ate collops on Sundays.

Even so, the night seemed endless to the boy, lying wakeful, with his eyes on the sky. Now he was hot, now cold. One moment the thought that the window might prove too strait for him threw him into a bath of perspiration; the next he shuddered at the possibility of re-capture, and saw himself dragged back and flayed by his brutal owner. But a watched pot does boil, though slowly. The first streak of dawn came at last-as it does when the sky is darkest; and with it, even as the boy rose warily to his feet, the sound of a faint whistle outside the window.

A common mortal could no more have passed through that window without noise than an old man can make himself young again. But the boy did it. As he dropped to the ground outside he heard the whistle again. The air was still dark; but a score of paces away, beyond a low wall, he made out the form of a horseman, and went towards it.

It was the man in the cloak, who stooped and held out his hand. "Jump up behind me," he muttered.

The boy went to obey, but as he clasped the outstretched hand, it was suddenly withdrawn. "What is that? What have you got there?" the rider exclaimed, peering down at him.

"It is only Taras, the monkey," Jehan said timidly.

"Throw it away," the stranger answered. "Do you hear me?" he continued in a stern, composed tone. "Throw it away, I say."

The boy stood hesitating a moment; then, without a word, he turned and fled into the darkness the way he had come. The man on the horse swore under his breath, but he had no remedy; and before he could tell what to expect, the boy was at his side again. "I've put it through the window," Jehan explained breathlessly. "If I had left it here, the dogs and the boys would have killed it."

The man made no comment aloud, but jerked him roughly to the crupper; and bidding him hold fast, started the horse, which, setting off at an easy amble, quickly bore them out of Fécamp. As they passed through the fair-ground of yesterday-a shadowy, ghastly waste at this hour, peopled by wandering asses, and packhorses, and a few lurking figures that leapt up out of the darkness, and ran after them whining for alms-the boy shivered and clung close to his protector. But he had no more than recognised the scene before they were out of sight of it, and riding through the open fields. The grey dawn was spreading, the cocks at distant farms were crowing. The dim, misty countryside, the looming trees, the raw air, the chill that crept into his ill-covered bones-all these, which might have seemed to others wretched conditions enough, filled the boy with hope and gladness. For they meant freedom.

But presently, as they rode on, his thoughts took a fresh turn. They began to busy themselves, and fearfully, with the man before him, whose continued silence and cold reserve set a hundred wild ideas humming in his brain. What manner of man was he? Who was he? Why had he helped him? Jehan had heard of ogres and giants that decoyed children into forests and devoured them. He had listened to ballads of such adventures, sung at fairs and in the streets, a hundred times; now they came so strongly into his mind, and so grew upon him in this grim companionship, that by-and-by, seeing a wood before them through which the road ran, he shook with terror and gave himself up for lost. Sure enough, when they came to the wood, and had ridden a little way into it, the man, whose face he had never seen, stopped. "Get down," he said sternly.

Jehan obeyed, his teeth chattering, his legs quaking under him. He expected the man to produce a large carving-knife, or call some of his fellows out of the forest to share his repast. Instead, the stranger made a queer pass with his hands over his horse's neck, and bade the boy go to an old stump which stood by the way. "There is a hole in the farther side of it," he said. "Look in the hole."

Jehan went trembling and found the hole, and looked. "What do you see?" the rider asked.

"A piece of money," said Jehan.

"Bring it to me," the stranger answered gravely.

The boy took it-it was only a copper sou-and did as he was bidden. "Get up!" said the horseman curtly. Jehan obeyed, and they went on as before.