I thought that I saw one whom I do not hold to
be art and part with me." He gazed after a crossing horseman. "No!
There was merely a trick of him. It is some other."
"The man for whom you are waiting?"
"Yes."
Deschamps returned to the subject of a moment before. "It is likely
that language bewrays much more than we think it does. I say 'the
man.' You echo it. And I am 'man.' And you are 'man.' 'Man'--'Man'!
Every instant it is said. Yet the identity that we state we never
assume!"
"I said that we could not hold the serpent."
Ten days afterward he did see Ian. The latter, after a slow and
difficult progress through France, came afoot into Paris. He sought,
and was glad enough to find, an old acquaintance and sometime
fellow-conspirator--Warburton.
"Blessed friendship!" he said, and warmed himself by Warburton's fire.
Something within him winced, and would, if it could, have put forward
a different phrase.
Warburton poured wine for him. "Now tell your tale! For months those
of us who remained in Paris have heard nothing but Trojan woes!"
Ian told. Culloden and after--Edinburgh--Lisbon--Vigo--travel in
Spain--Senor Nobody--
"That was a curious adventure! And you don't know the ransomer's
name?"
"Not I! Senor Nobody he rests."
"Well, and after that?"
Ian related his wanderings from the Pyrenees up to Paris.
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