D’Artagnan looked at his friends, as if to say, “Well, what did I tell you?”

“Now,” continued he, addressing Planchet, “you have eight days to get an interview with Lord de Winter; you have eight days to return — in all sixteen days. If, on the sixteenth day after your departure, at eight o’clock in the evening you are not here, no money — even if it be but five minutes past eight.”

“Then, monsieur,” said Planchet, “you must buy me a watch.”

“Take this,” said Athos, with his usual careless generosity, giving him his own, “and be a good lad. Remember, if you talk, if you babble, if you get drunk, you risk your master’s head, who has so much