d to furnish me
with a satisfactory explanation, I shall feel bound to complain to the
English Ambassador."

"I presume," replied the officer stiffly, "that you will recognize this
as a sufficient explanation; the English Ambassador certainly will."
He pulled out a warrant for the arrest of Arthur Burton, student of
philosophy, and, handing it to James, added coldly: "If you wish for
any further explanation, you had better apply in person to the chief of
police."

Julia snatched the paper from her husband, glanced over it, and flew at
Arthur like nothing else in the world but a fashionable lady in a rage.

"So it's you that have disgraced the family!" she screamed; "setting all
the rabble in the town gaping and staring as if the thing were a show?
So you have turned jail-bird, now, with all your piety! It's what we
might have expected from that Popish woman's child----"

"You must not speak to a prisoner in a foreign language, madam," the
officer interrupted; but his remonstrance was hardly audible under the
torrent of Julia's vociferous English.

"Just what we might have expected! Fasting and prayer and saintly
meditation; and this is what was underneath it all! I thought that would
be the end of it."

Dr. Warren had once compared Julia to a salad into which the cook had
upset the vinegar cruet. The sound of her thin, hard voice set Arthur's
teeth on edge, and the simile suddenly popped up in his memory.

"There's no use in this kind of talk," he said. "You need not be afraid
of any unpleasantness; everyone will understand that you are all quite
innocent. I suppose, gentlemen, you want to search my things. I have
nothing to hide."

While the gendarmes ransacked the room, reading his letters, examining
his college papers, and turning out drawers and boxes, he sat waiting
on the edge of the bed, a little flushed with excitement, but in no
way distressed. The search did not disquiet him. He had always burned
letters which could possibly compromise anyone, and beyond a few
manuscript verses, half revolutionary, half mystical, and two or three
numbers of Young Italy, the gendarmes found nothing to repay them for
their trouble. Julia, after a long resistance, yielded to the entreaties
of her brother-in-law and went back to bed, sweeping past Arthur with
magnificent disdain, James meekly following.

When they had left the room, Thomas, who all this while had been
tramping up and down, trying to look indifferent, ap