ed hands and blinded eyes; she
was like a child saying its prayers but for the writhen torture of
her face, where wild hopes and lunatic terrors played alternately.

"M'sieur, you can save him! You have the grand air, M'sieur; there is
God in your face; you make men hear you! For mercy--for blessed
charity--ah, M'sieur, M'sieur, I will carry your sins for you; I will
go to hell in your place! You are great--one sees it; and he is
great, too! M'sieur, I am your chattel, your beast--only save him,
save him!"

It tore the barren atmosphere of the office to rags; it made the
place august and awful. Rufin bent to her and took her clasped hands
in one of his to raise her.

"I will do all that I can," he said earnestly. "All! I dare not do
less, my child."

She gulped and shivered; she had poured her soul and her force forth,
and she was weak and empty. She strained to find further expression,
but could not. Rufin supported her to the chair.

"We must see what is happening in this trial," he said to the little
official. "We have lost time as it is."

"I will guide you," replied the other happily. "It!-is a situation,
is it not? Ah, the crevasses, the abysses of life! Come, my friend."

From the Salle des Pas Perdus a murmur reached them. They entered it
to find the crowd sundered, leaving empty a broad alley.

"Qu'est ce qu'y a?" The little official was jumping on tiptoe to see
over the heads in front of him. "Is it possible that the case is
finished?"

A huissier came at his gesture and found means to get them through to
the front of the crowd, which waited with a hungry expectation.

"The case is certainly finished," murmured the little man.

A double door opened at the head of the alley of people, and half a
dozen men in uniform came out quickly. Others followed, and they came
down toward the entrance. In the midst of them, their shabby civilian
clothes contrasting abruptly with the uniforms of their guards,
slouched four men, handcuffed and bareheaded.

"It is they," whispered the official to Rufin, and half turned his
head to ask a question of the huissier behind them.

Three of them were lean young men, with hardy, debased, animal
countenances. They were referable at a glance to the dregs of
civilization. They had the stooped shoulders, the dragging gait, the
half-servile, half-threatening expression that hallmarks the apache.
It was to the fourth that Rufin turned with an overdue thrill of
excitement. A