right, I think. They like you here."

"I've a couple of good friends to see me through," was the quiet reply.

"Who are they?"

Ferrol went to his trunk, took out a pair of pistols, and balanced them
lightly in his hands. "Good to confuse twenty men," he said. "A brace
of 'em are bound to drop, and they don't know which one."

He raised a pistol lazily, and looked out along its barrel through the
open, sunshiny window. Something in the pose of the body, in the curve
of the arm, struck Nicolas strangely. He moved almost in front of
Ferrol. There came back to him mechanically the remembrance of a piece
of silver on the butt of one of the highwayman's pistols!

The same piece of silver was on the butt of Ferrol's pistol. It
startled him; but he almost laughed to him self at the absurdity of the
suggestion. Ferrol was the last man in the world to play a game like
that, and with him.

Still he could not resist a temptation. He stepped in front of the
pistol, almost touching it with his forehead, looking at Ferrol as he had
looked at the highwayman last night.

"Look out, it's loaded!" said Ferrol, lowering the weapon coolly, and
not showing by sign or muscle that he understood Lavilette's meaning.
"I should think you'd had enough of pistols for one twenty-four hours."

"Do you know, Ferrol, you looked just then so like the robber last night