rent! Oh!
little girl, I must go to Angouleme at once and ask Cachan's advice,
and see that I am straight. You did right well to come over.
Forewarned is forearmed."

After two hours of argument Eve was fain to go, defeated by the
unanswerable _dictum_, "Women never understand business." She had come
with a faint hope, she went back again almost heartbroken, and reached
home just in time to receive notice of judgment; Sechard must pay
Metivier in full. The appearance of a bailiff at a house door is an
event in a country town, and Doublon had come far too often of late.
The whole neighborhood was talking about the Sechards. Eve dared not
leave her house; she dreaded to hear the whispers as she passed.

"Oh! my brother, my brother!" cried poor Eve, as she hurried into the
passage and up the stairs, "I can never forgive you, unless it
was----"

"Alas! it was that, or suicide," said David, who had followed her.

"Let us say no more about it," she said quietly. "The woman who
dragged him down into the depths of Paris has much to answer for; and
your father, my David, is quite inexorable! Let us bear it in
silence."

A discreet rapping at the door cut short some word of love on David's
lips. Marion appeared, towing the big, burly Kolb after her across the
outer room.

"Madame," said Marion, "we have known, Kolb and I, that you and the
master were very much put about; and as we have eleven hundred francs
of savings between us, we thought we could not do better than put them
in the mistress' hands----"

"Die misdress," echoed Kolb fervently.

"Kolb," cried David, "you and I will never part. Pay a thousand francs
on account to Maitre Cachan, and take a receipt for it; we will keep
the rest. And, Kolb, no power on earth must extract a word from you as
to my work, or my absences from home, or the things you may see me
bring back; and if I send you to look for plants for me, you know, no
human being must set eyes on you. They will try to corrupt you, my
good Kolb; they will offer you thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of
francs, to tell----"

"Dey may offer me millions," cried Kolb, "but not ein vort from me
shall dey traw. Haf I not peen in der army, and know my orders?"

"Well, you are warned. March, and ask M. Petit-Claud to go with you as
witness."

"Yes," said the Alsacien. "Some tay I hope to be rich enough to dust
der chacket of dat man of law. I don't like his gountenance."

"Kolb is a good man, madame,"