shoulders when people spoke of the future. His secret, then, was in the past, as had often been vaguely said to d’Artagnan.

This mysterious shade, spread over his whole person, rendered still more interesting the man whose eyes or mouth, even in the most complete intoxication, had never revealed anything, however skillfully questions had been put to hiM.“Well,” thought d’Artagnan, “poor Athos is perhaps at this moment dead, and dead by my fault — for it was I who dragged him into this affair, of which he did not know the origin, of which he is ignorant of the result, and from which he can derive no advantage.”

“Without reckoning, monsieur,” added Planchet to his master’s audibly expressed reflections, “that we perhaps owe