d reviews life under too many
shifting lights to rest content with the invidious distinctions of the
law!'

'But you always say--at least, so I understood you'--said madame, 'that
these lads display no imagination whatever.'

'My dear, they displayed imagination, and of a very fantastic order,
too,' returned the Doctor, 'when they embraced their beggarly profession.
Besides--and this is an argument exactly suited to your intellectual
level--many of them are English and American. Where else should we
expect to find a thief?--And now you had better get your coffee. Because
we have lost a treasure, there is no reason for starving. For my part, I
shall break my fast with white wine. I feel unaccountably heated and
thirsty to-day. I can only attribute it to the shock of the discovery.
And yet, you will bear me out, I supported the emotion nobly.'

The Doctor had now talked himself back into an admirable humour; and as
he sat in the arbour and slowly imbibed a large allowance of white wine
and picked a little bread and cheese with no very impetuous appetite, if
a third of his meditations ran upon the missing treasure, the other two-
thirds were more pleasingly busied in the retrospect of his detective
skill.

About eleven Casimir arrived; he had caught an early train to
Fontainebleau, and driven over to save time; and now his cab was stabled
at Tentaillon's, and he remarked, studying his watch, that he could spare
an hour and a half. He was much the man of business, decisively spoken,
given to frowning in an intellectual manner. Anastasie's born brother,
he did not waste much sentiment on the lady, gave her an English family
kiss, and demanded a meal without delay.

'You can tell me your story while we eat,' he observed. 'Anything good
to-day, Stasie?'

He was promised something good. The trio sat down to table in the
arbour, Jean-Marie waiting as well as eating, and the Doctor recounted
what had happened in his richest narrative manner. Casimir heard it with
explosions of laughter.

'What a streak of luck for you, my good brother,' he observed, when the
tale was over. 'If you had gone to Paris, you would have played dick-
duck-drake with the whole consignment in three months. Your own would
have followed; and you would have come to me in a procession like the
last time. But I give you warning--Stasie may weep and Henri
ratiocinate--it will not serve you twice. Your next collapse will be
fatal. I thoug