wn," said Mr. Romaine. "The man was cheating you. I can only
hope," he added with a sour smile, "that you paid him on account with an
I.O.U."

But Alain turned at bay. "One trivial point seems to have escaped you,
Master Attorney, or your courage is more than I gave you credit for. The
English are none too popular in Paris as yet, and this is not the most
scrupulous quarter. One blast of this whistle, a cry of '_Espion
Anglais!_' and two Englishmen----"

"Say three," Mr. Romaine interrupted, and strode to the door. "Will Mr.
Burchell Fenn be good enough to step upstairs?"

And here let me cry "Halt." There are things in this world--or that is
my belief--too pitiful to be set down in writing, and of these, Alain's
collapse was one. It may be, too, that Mr. Romaine's British
righteousness accorded rather ill with the weapon he used so
unsparingly. Of Fenn I need only say, that the luscious rogue shouldered
through the doorway as though he had a public duty to discharge, and
only the contrariness of circumstances had prevented his discharging it
before. He cringed to Mr. Romaine, who held him and the whole nexus of
his villainies in the hollow of his hand. He was even obsequiously eager
to denounce his fellow-traitor. Under a like compulsion, he would (I
feel sure) have denounced his own mother. I saw the sturdy Dudgeon's
mouth working like a bull-terrier's over a shrewmouse. And between them,
Alain had never a chance. Not for the first time in this history, I
found myself all but taking sides with him in sheer repulsion from the
barbarity of the attack. It seemed that it was through Fenn that Mr.
Romaine had first happened on the scent; and the greater rogue had held
back a part of the evidence, and would trade it now--"having been led
astray--to any gentleman that would let bygones be bygones." And it was
I, at length, who interposed when my cousin was beaten to his knees,
and, having dismissed Mr. Burchell Fenn, restored the discussion to a
businesslike footing. The end of it was, that Alain renounced all his
claims, and accepted a yearly pension of six thousand francs. Mr.
Romaine made it a condition that he should never set foot again in
England; but seeing that he would certainly be arrested for debt within
twenty-four hours of his landing at Dover, I thought this unnecessary.

"A good day's work," said the lawyer, as we stood together in the street
outside.

But I was silent.

"And now, Mr. Anne, if I may hav