"I hardly know," laughed Herrick. "The whim of an Englishman to see the game to the end. I might have been wiser to ride to the frontier while I had the chance."
"Perhaps; yet who shall say? Providence, or circumstance, call it what you will, determines these matters. I, too, have schemed, my son, schemed to bring about this very meeting, and after all it comes in a strange manner. It was I who on the night of your arrival arranged to have you captured—no, not as a spy, I never thought of that. I only wanted you brought here."
"Why not have invited me to come?" asked Herrick, who, although astonished at the priest's admission, would not show it.
"I did not know why you had come to Vayenne. I had reasons to be suspicious."
"I cannot congratulate you on your method," said Herrick. "Your fellows nearly succeeded in getting me hanged on the nearest lamp."
"You put such wholesome fear in them that they acted foolishly. One is still in his bed getting his bones mended, the other——"
"Faith, I'll give him some mending to do if he but gives me the chance."
"Poor Mercier," said Father Bertrand; "and you seem to have treated him in friendly fashion to-day."
"Was that he? The man who brought me here?"