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By Root 1125 0

at the Musketeers’ Club he won six thousand pistoles, then promptly lost all his winnings, then mortgaged his gold-embroidered dress belt and then recouped all without turning a hair. Indeed he emerged from the ordeal one hundred louis to the good, without ever having raised or lowered his handsome dark eyebrows one whit, without his hands losing their pearly hue or betraying the slightest tremor, and without his conversation, which had been particularly agreeable that evening, ceasing one moment to be so. Finally his depression did not spring, as so often happens with our English neighbors, from the climate; Athos was gloomier than ever toward the finest season of the year, the months of June and July being particularly difficult for him.

For the present he seemed to have no worries; when anybody spoke of the future, he merely shrugged his shoulders. His secret, then, was concerned with the past, as D’Artagnan had vaguely heard from one musketeer or another.

The mystery which surrounded his entire person served to heighten people’s interest in this man whose eyes and whose mouth, even in moments of abject drunkenness, had never revealed anything about himself, however insidiously he had been questioned.

“Alas!” D’Artagnan said. “Poor Athos may well be dead at this moment, and dead by my fault! It was I who dragged him into this business, of which he knew neither the origin nor the outcome, and from which he had nothing to gain.”

“There’s something else too,” Planchet replied. “We must remember that we probably owe our lives to him, Monsieur. It was Monsieur Athos who warned us to get away and after he had emptied his two pistols, what a terrible clatter he made with his sword! You would have thought that twenty men, or rather twenty furious devils, were falling upon him.”

The lackey’s comment redoubled D’Artagnan’s eagerness to ascertain what fate had befallen Athos. Our Gascon spurred on his horse though it needed no goading, for he was already galloping smartly and making excellent time. By about eleven o’clock in the morning, Amiens loomed up before them; a half-hour later they drew up before the accursed inn.

The perfidy of the landlord rankling in D’Artagnan’s heart, he had more than once planned a dire vengeance which offered him some consolation in mere anticipation of it. His hat drawn low over his eyes, his left hand on the pommel of his sword, his right hand cracking his whip against his leg, he strode forward resolutely. The host advanced, bowing, to meet him.

“Do you recognize me?” D’Artagnan asked sharply.

“No, Monsieur, I have not that honor,” the host replied very humbly, his eyes dazzled by the brilliant style in which D’Artagnan traveled.

“What? You mean to say you don’t know me?”

“No, I do not, Monsieur.”

“Well, let me refresh your memory. About a fortnight ago, more or less, you had the audacity to accuse a gentleman of passing counterfeit money. What has become of this gentleman?”

The host paled before D’Artagnan’s threatening manner and Planchet’s immediate adoption of the same.

“Ah, Monsieur, pray don’t mention the matter,” he cried in the most lachrymose tone, “ah, God! I have paid dearly for that mistake, unhappy wretch that I am!”

“But the gentleman, I say, the gentleman, what has become of him?”

“I implore you to deign to listen to me, Monsieur, and to be merciful. I beg you to do me the favor of being seated.”

D’Artagnan, mute with anger and anxiety, took a seat, stern and comminatory as a veteran judge. Planchet stood proudly at attention close to his master’s armchair.

“This is what happened, Monsieur,” the landlord went on tremulously. “I will tell you all, for now I do recognize you. You are the gentleman who left when I had that unfortunate difference with the gentleman you mentioned.”

“I am indeed. So you see you have little mercy to expect if you do not tell me the whole truth!”

“Be good enough to hear me, I beg you, and you shall hear it in every tragic detail.”

“I am listening.”

“I was warned by the authorities that a notorious counterfeiter would arrive at my inn