compared it with the handwriting on the scrap of paper I had found in the snowball. A brief scrutiny showed me that they were the work of the same person!

 "YOUR SCRIBE MIGHT DO FOR ME." Page 23.

I went back to M. Nicholas, and after attesting the accounts, and making one or two notes, remarked in a careless way on the clearness of the hand. "I am badly in need of a fourth secretary," I added. "Your scribe might do for me."

It did not escape me that once again M. Nicholas looked uncomfortable, his red face taking a deeper tinge and his hand going nervously to his pointed gray beard, "I do not think he would do for you," he answered.

"What is his name?" I asked, purposely bending over the papers and avoiding his eyes.

"I have dismissed him," he rejoined curtly. "I do not know where he could now be found."

"That is a pity--he writes well," I answered, as if it were nothing but a whim that led me to pursue the subject. "And good clerks are scarce. What was his name?"

"Felix," he said reluctantly.

I had now all I wanted. Accordingly I spoke of another matter and shortly afterward Nicholas rose and went. But he left me in a fever of doubt and suspicion; so that for nearly half an hour I walked up and down the room, unable to decide whether I should treat the warning of the snowball with contempt, as the work of a discharged servant, or on that very account attach the more credit to it. By and by I remembered that the last sheet of the roll I had audited bore date the previous day; whence it was clear that Felix had been dismissed within the last twenty-four hours, and perhaps after the delivery of his note to me. Such a coincidence, which seemed no less pertinent than strange, opened a wide field for conjecture; and the possibility that Nicholas had really called on me to sound me and learn what I knew presently occurring to my mind, brought me to a final determination to seek out this Felix, and without the delay of an hour sift the matter to the bottom.

Doubtless I shall seem to some to have acted precipitately, and built much on small foundations. I answer that I had the life of the King my master to guard, and in that cause dared neglect no precaution, however trivial, nor any indication, however remote. Would that all my care and vigilance had longer sufficed to preserve for France the life of that great man! But God 

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