"The shutter is closed," be said; "but the shutter of God's mercy is never closed!"

Still, knowing that this was the crucial moment, and that we should be detected now if at all, I found it; an age before the voice behind the curtains answered "Amen!" and yet another age before the hidden speaker continued "Who are you?"

"The cure of St. Germain," Henry responded.

The man behind the curtains gasped, and they were for a moment violently agitated, as if a hand seized them and let them go again. But I had reckoned that the unknown, after a pause of horror, would suppose that he had heard amiss and continue his usual catechism. And so it proved. In a voice that shook a little, he asked, "Whom do you bring to me?"

"I am listening," the unknown said.

The light in the basin flared up a little, casting dark shadows on the ceiling, and at the same moment the shutter, which I had failed to fasten securely, fell open with a grinding sound. One of the curtains swayed a little in the breeze, "I have robbed my master," I said, slowly.

"A hundred and twenty thousand crowns."

The bed shook until the boards creaked under it; but this time no hand grasped the curtains. Instead, a strained voice--thick and coarse, yet differing from that muffled tone which we had heard before--asked, "Who are you?"