jour!... Cranajour!" yelled the old termagant.

There was no answer.

"He can't possibly be in his canteen," said Mother Toulouche to herself.
"If he was he'd have answered, fool though he is, and would have come
down!... Sure he's gone to drag his old down-at-heels somewhere--but
where?... Oh, well, we can manage to do without him!"

The old receiver went back to her store, and was starting on a queer
sort of job when the door, which led on to the quay, burst open before a
panting, breathless individual. He ran right up the store and stopped
short. Mother Toulouche had seized the first thing she could find, and
had taken up a defensive attitude. Her weapon was a great ancient
cavalry sabre!

But the newcomer intended no harm--quite the contrary! After an
instinctive recoil, he leaned against a table and wiped his forehead,
breathing in gasps, incapable of pronouncing a syllable.

Mother Toulouche had recognised him:

"Ah! It's you, Redhead!... And not a bit too soon either! I've been
waiting for you this last half-hour! Ernestine will be there in ten
minutes' time! However is it you are so late?"

Redhead was well named! His bullet-head was covered with russet-red
hair, cut very short; his complexion was a good match; his bloated
cheeks and his potato-shaped nose were covered with red patches; his
shaven chin was a tawny red; round his little gimlet eyes was a fringe
of red lashes: it was a bestial face.

He was hatless; above his waistcoat with metal buttons he wore a black
coat; his trousers had a yellow line down them: he was evidently a
servant, wearing the livery of some big house. The fellow was slowly
recovering his breath; but he continued to wipe great drops of sweat off
his narrow forehead; he was shaking all over, and his morose countenance
was twitching and contracting nervously.

"Well, what's your news? Good or bad?" questioned Mother Toulouche in a
brutal tone.

Redhead replied almost inaudibly:

"That depends!... It's good on the whole."

A gleam of cupidity showed in the old receiver's eyes:

"Got a bit of tin on her back, that woman--eh?"

Redhead nodded a "yes." Thereupon Mother Toulouche went into her back
store and returned with a claret glass filled to the brim with rum:

"Shoot that down your throat! That'll put you right!"

When he had swallowed the bumper he seemed to gain courage, and said:

"If I didn't get here sooner it's because I had to wait--but I saw the
little thin