Page:Hope--Sophy of Kravonia.djvu/257

A FRENCHMAN AND A MATTRESS it's fit for a gentleman to drink out of," said he, as he set it down by Markart's hand. The Captain took it up and swallowed it at a draught.

"Ugh! Corked, I think! Beastly, anyhow!" said he.

"They poison us as well as shut us up!" cried Lepage in burlesque anger. "Try the other bottle, Captain!"

The other bottle was better, said Markart, and he drank pretty well the whole of it, Lepage standing by and watching him with keen interest. It was distressing not to know how much of the King's draught would kill; it had been necessary to err on the safe side—the side safe for Lepage, that is.

Captain Markart thought he would smoke his cigar in the little room, lying on the bed; he was tired and sleepy—very sleepy, there was no denying it. Lepage sat down and ate and drank; he found no fault with the wine in the first bottle. Then he went and looked at Markart. The Captain lay in his shirt, breeches, and boots. He was sound asleep and breathing heavily; his cigar had fallen on the sheet, but apparently had been out before it fell. Lepage regarded him with pursed lips, shrugged his shoulders, and slipped the Captain's revolver into his pocket. The Captain's recovery must be left to Fate.

For the next hour he worked at his pair of sheets, slicing, twisting, and splicing. In the end he found himself possessed of a fairly stout rope twelve or thirteen feet long, but he could find nothing solid to tie it to near the window, except the bed, and that was a yard away. He would still have a fall of some twenty feet, and the ground was hard with a spring frost, There would be need of the mattress. He 239