et
instructions...."

Poor Elizabeth Dollon stared miserably at this strange companion which
Fate, in the person of a warder, had thrust on her.

The old woman stared with no little curiosity at the pale, sad girl....
Silence fell for a few minutes, then the new prisoner asked, in a tone
of rough familiarity:

"What's your name?"

"I call myself Elizabeth!"

"Don't know it!... Elizabeth, who?..."

"Elizabeth Dollon...."

The old woman rose from the corner of the mattress she had seated
herself on.

"True? You're Elizabeth Dollon?... Well, that's funny! Have you been
nabbed long?..."

"You ask if it is long since I was...?"

"Nabbed!... Taken!... Arrested!... Eh?"

Elizabeth nodded in the affirmative. It seemed to her that an infinity
of time had passed since her imprisonment at Saint Lazare.

"I was nabbed last night. If you want to know my name, I'm called Mother
Toulouche. They say I'm one of the band of Numbers, and that I receive
stolen goods! Lies! That's well understood!"

Elizabeth had no desire to go into such an unsavoury question. This
horrid old woman rather frightened her; but, such had been her distress
and fears since she had been a prisoner, that it was a relief not to be
quite alone; to have even this old creature to speak to was better than
solitary confinement.

In her character of old jail-bird, Mother Toulouche made herself quickly
at home.

"Moved to-morrow, they say I'm to be! Pity! At bottom you're not one of
the scurvy sort, but you must be here to play spy on me, for all
that!... When do you go out? Are you long for Saint Lago?" Alas, how
could Elizabeth tell?

* * * * *

"I like being a barrister," thought Fandor, as he entered Saint Lazare.
"For the last hour I have felt a different person, much more serious,
more sure of myself, not to say, more eloquent!... I must be eloquent,
since I have succeeded in persuading my friend, Maitre Dubard, to get
himself appointed officially as Mademoiselle Dollon's counsel; then to
obtain a permit of communication, and to hand this same permit over to
me, so that his identification papers, safely tucked away in my
portfolio, make of me the most indisputable of Maitres Dubard!"

* * * * *

Fandor might well congratulate himself! By means of this ruse--his own
idea--he was enabled to see Elizabeth, not in the prison parlour, but in
a special cell, and without a witness. As