Again I fell to thinking; again I slept, and woke again to find the night
gone and the sunlight on my face. Someone knocked at the door, and that
knocking vibrated through my brain and set me wide-awake, indeed. It was
as the signal to uplift the curtain and let my play-acting commence.
Hastily I rose and shot a glance at the mirror to see that my wig hung
straight and that my mask was rightly adjusted. I started at my own
reflection, for methought that from the glass 't was St. Auban who looked
at me, as I had seen him look the night before when he had donned those
things at my command.
"Hol? there, within!" came Montr?sor's voice. "Monsieur le Capitaine!" A
fresh shower of blows descended on the oak panels.
I yawned with prodigious sonority, and overturned a chair with my foot.
Then bracing myself for the ordeal, through which I looked to what scant
information I possessed and my own mother wit, to bear me successfully, I
strode across to admit my visitor.
Muffling my voice, as I had heard St. Auban do at the inn, by drawing my
nether lip over my teeth--
"Pardieu!" quoth I, as I opened the door, "it seems, Lieutenant, that I
must have fallen asleep over those musty documents.
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