o mind them at all, and
so long as there's a chance to get rid of them, why, I don't object. But
that's how it all came about--through counterfeit money, sir. They used
Emile for a cat's-paw, so I've heard, but when he was caught they let
him take his punishment. It was his cousin, Alfred Le Duc, who got him
to confess, under promise of a light sentence. They do say the old
rascal fooled him into it, for what reason nobody ever knew. Anyhow,
they sent Emile away for ten years. He threatened to turn state's
evidence, and perhaps he would have done so if he hadn't escaped."

"Ah! So he broke jail?"

"Exactly! And they've been hunting him ever since, with a reward on his
head, and all the time the counterfeits are still coming in, and the
police are as far from the truth as ever. Poor boy! There he lies, dead,
with a flower over his heart. And I saw him fall! This will kill his
mother. She's blind, you know, and very feeble."

"He has a cousin, Madelon, I believe," Roly ventured.

"Eh? Then you know her? A blessed angel, with a face like a picture and
a heart of pure gold. Hark!" The old lady listened. "There go the clocks
striking six. That means masks off and the end of the carnival. Too bad!
Too bad! And Emile with a flower over his heart."

* * * * *

Like one in a dream Roland Van Dam emerged from the foreign quarter into
the broad reaches of Canal Street. He had been gone nearly three hours.
The pavements were strewn with confetti and the litter of a Mardi Gras
crowd, but nowhere was a masker to be seen. Directly ahead of him loomed
the Grunewald, a splendid tower of white brick and terra-cotta. Inside
were his friends, awaiting him, perhaps. He realized, with a sinking
sensation, that Eleanor Banniman was among them and that he had asked
her to be his wife. What a change three hours had brought to him! Why,
in that brief interval he had lived through all those very emotions the
existence of which they had both denied earlier in the day. Life had
opened for him, and he had seen it in the raw. On his hands was the
blood of a fellow-man; on his lips the fragrance of a kiss that set his
veins afire.

"I say, Roly, where _have_ you been?" Miss Banniman's strident voice
demanded, as he entered the cafe.

"Bless my soul!" exclaimed her father, waving his prospective son-in-law
to a chair with a pudgy hand. "We thought you were lost in the tall
grass. You missed tea, but you're in tim