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it was pitch-dark in her chamber, and her rouser was not Biddy hauling her out for a brisk turn in the garden before breakfast as she occasionally did when she could not sleep herself, but David. She could smell the ale on his breath, and realized as she became more alert that he had been drinking more than he should, though he was not foxed.
    “Wake up! Wake up,” he was saying in an excited voice.
    “What is it? What is the matter?” she asked, her own excitement rising at his unexpected call.
    He busied himself with lighting her candle as she got out of bed and struggled into a robe. His eyes, she saw, were flashing, and the high spirits were not caused by an excess of ale as happened occasionally, but something more serious. “You’ll never guess what!” he whispered. “There’s spies, right here at Bolt Hall.”
    “David, what do you mean?” she asked, her heart accelerating with sheer delight.
    “I heard ‘em, and saw ‘em, too.”
    “Who are they?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You saw them, you said.”
    “Saw the tops of their heads. I rattled in to the inn for a couple of wets with the fellows, and didn’t feel like sleeping when I got back. I went out on the balcony off my room to blow a cloud, and that’s when I noticed them. There’s a full moon and I saw them as clear as if it were daylight. They were standing beneath me, half under the balcony so I couldn’t get much of a look at them, and they were talking up rescuing Boney, just as we knew someone would.”
    “Wonderful!” she breathed, her own eyes shining like stars. Not that she wished to see the Corsican freed, of course, but that there would actually be an attempt was certainly a welcome piece of intelligence. She had never half believed it. “What did they say?”
    “Couldn’t hear every word. They were whispering. Two of them. One said something about spending a sprat to catch a mackerel, and I took them for a couple of fishermen, but then the other answered something like, ‘Yes, for putting up ten thousand pounds we stand to make a hundred thousand. Not a bad day’s work.’ And the other laughed and said, 'Night’s work. We won’t tackle it in broad daylight. Some quiet moonless night it’ll be, eh, mate?’ I figured they were thieves—a hundred thousand pounds, how would anybody make such a sum honestly? But then I twigged to it it was Boney they were talking about, of course. So I stepped on my cigar to hide the smell of the smoke and crouched as close to the railing as I could get and cocked my ears sharp. Then the first one went on to say that the biggest joke of it all was doing it from Bolt’s Hall, right under the old boy’s nose. Papa, you see.”
    “Who can it be?”
    “I don’t know. Let me tell you the rest—the best part. They went on talking, saying not much of any account but enough to give the show       away. Then one of them said, ‘Handy having the money right here. Wouldn’t Henry stare if he knew there was ten thousand pounds in gold sitting on his doorstep the whole time;’ then they went on to argue a bit about it not being handy but a demmed nuisance to try to get ahold of such a sum in a hurry, and he wondered what Cicero was thinking of, to make him do it. One of them put up the whole sum. And the other said that if Cicero said ten thousand was needed, then ten thousand was needed, right enough, for there wasn’t a better brain in Europe than Cicero’s.”
    “Who is Cicero?”
    “It ain’t Cicero the old Roman scholar they meant. It’s a code name is what it is for the ringleader, so they don’t have to use his real name. Cicero is certainly the fellow in charge of the whole—they said enough to make that clear. Gad, but I’d love to discover him. I decided to nip down to the saloon and sneak outdoors and circle around to get a peek at them, but when I got there, they’d gone. Not a trace of them. I went outside and looked all around, right down to the dock, but there