of conspiring in prison. Anticipated course of law by suicide.
Action accepted as sufficient confession of guilt. Goods confiscated.
1st Thermidor, year two of the Republic."

"Silence!" cried the man with the bludgeon, as the president dropped a
little sand on the entry, and signing to the jailer that he might remove
the dead body, closed the book.

"Any special cases this morning?" resumed the president, looking round
at the group behind him.

"There is one," said Lomaque, making his way to the back of the official
chair. "Will it be convenient to you, citizen, to take the case of Louis
Trudaine and Rose Danville first? Two of my men are detained here as
witnesses, and their time is valuable to the Republic."

The president marked a list of names before him, and handed it to the
crier or usher, placing the figures one and two against Louis Trudaine
and Rose Danville.

While Lomaque was backing again to his former place behind the chair,
Danville approached and whispered to him, "There is a rumor that secret
information has reached you about the citizen and citoyenne Dubois. Is
it true? Do you know who they are?"

"Yes," answered Lomaque; "but I have superior orders to keep the
information to myself just at present."

The eagerness with which Danville put his question, and the
disappointment he showed on getting no satisfactory answer to it, were
of a nature to satisfy the observant chief agent that his superintendent
was really as ignorant as he appeared to be on the subject of the man
and woman Dubois. That one mystery, at any rate was still, for Danville,
a mystery unrevealed.

"Louis Trudaine! Rose Danville!" shouted the crier, with another rap of
his bludgeon.

The two came forward, at the appeal, to the front railing of the
platform. The first sight of her judges, the first shock on confronting
the pitiless curiosity of the audience, seemed to overwhelm Rose. She
turned from deadly pale to crimson, then to pale again, and hid her face
on her brother's shoulder. How fast she heard his heart throbbing! How
the tears filled her eyes as she felt that his fear was all for her!

"Now," said the president, writing down their names. "Denounced by
whom?"

Magloire and Picard stepped forward to the table. The first
answered--"By Citizen Superintendent Danville."

The reply made a great stir and sensation among both prisoners and
audience.

"Accused of what?" pursued the president.

"The male prisoner, o