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132 for these nimble adventurers to swing themselves across to Florine's room, but twelve feet or so away. Once inside Bertrand's they proceeded with abundant caution, all of which near came to naught through Florine's sudden shriek and my own nervous clamour. It shamed me heartily.

"Truly, comrade, thou hast good lungs," Jerome told me days afterward. "It took all our strength to shut thee of thy wind."

When the four men found me a helpless body in their hands, they were greatly troubled. However, Florine insisted that I be carried to her room where she could conceal me.

Once there they found means to truss me up like a bale of merchandise and sling me across the alley again, whence I was conveyed, still unconscious, through out-of-the-way streets to the Austrian Arms.

And so it was I came to my strength, safe in my own lodgings in Rue St. Denis, with Florine and her kind-hearted friend to nurse me.