--who it was
they took from him?"

"Why, sure, the wife of that old Frenchman, Lascelles, that lives
below,--her the lieutenant's been sparkin' this three months."

"The very wan, mind ye!" replied the lady of the house, with significant
emphasis and glance from her bleary eyes; "the very wan," she finished,
with slow nodding accompaniment of the frowzy head. "And that's the kind
of gintlemen that undertakes to hold up their heads over soldiers like
Doyle. Here, byes, dhrink now, but be off ag'inst his coming. He'll be
here any minute. Take this to comfort ye, but kape still about this till
ye see me ag'in--or Doyle. Now run." And with scant ceremony the dreary
party was hustled out through a paved court-yard to a gate-way opening
on a side street. Houses were few and scattering so far below the heart
of the city. The narrow strip of land between the great river and the
swamp was cut up into walled enclosures, as a rule,--abandoned
warehouses and cotton-presses, moss-grown one-storied frame structures,
standing in the midst of desolate fields and decrepit fences. Only among
the peaceful shades of the Ursuline convent and the warlike flanking
towers at the barracks was there aught that spoke of anything but
demoralization and decay. Back from the levee a block or two the double
lines of strap-iron stretched over a wooden causeway between parallel
wet ditches gave evidence of some kind of a railway, on which, at rare
intervals, jogged a sleepy mule with a sleepier driver and a musty old
rattle-trap of a car,--a car butting up against the animal's lazy hocks
and rousing him occasionally to ringing and retaliatory kicks. Around
the barracks the buildings were closer, mainly in the way of saloons;
then came a mile-long northward stretch of track, with wet fields on
either side, fringed along the river by solid structures and walled
enclosures that told of days more prosperous than those which so closely
followed the war. It was to one of these graceless drinking-shops and
into the hands of a rascally "dago" known as Anatole that Mrs. Doyle
commended her trio of allies, and being rid of them she turned back to
her prisoner, their erstwhile companion. Absinthe wrought its work on
his meek and pliant spirit, and the shaking hand was nerved to do the
woman's work. At her dictation, with such corrections as his better
education suggested, two letters were draughted, and with these in her
hand she went aloft. In fifteen minutes s