cover the direction that he took.

Eve meanwhile went out on the tolerably ingenious pretext of asking
advise of Postel, sat awhile enduring the insulting pity that spends
itself in words, left the Postel family, and stole away unseen to
Basine Clerget, told her troubles, and asked for help and shelter.
Basine, for greater safety, had brought Eve into her bedroom, and now
she opened the door of a little closet, lighted only by a skylight in
such a way that prying eyes could not see into it. The two friends
unstopped the flue which opened into the chimney of the stove in the
workroom, where the girls heated their irons. Eve and Basine spread
ragged coverlets over the brick floor to deaden any sound that David
might make, put in a truckle bed, a stove for his experiments, and a
table and a chair. Basine promised to bring food in the night; and as
no one had occasion to enter her room, David might defy his enemies
one and all, or even detectives.

"At last!" Eve said, with her arms about her friend, "at last he is in
safety."

Eve went back to Postel to submit a fresh doubt that had occurred to
her, she said. She would like the opinion of such an experienced
member of the Chamber of Commerce; she so managed that he escorted her
home, and listened patiently to his commiseration.

"Would this have happened if you had married me?"--all the little
druggist's remarks were pitched in this key.

Then he went home again to find Mme. Postel jealous of Mme. Sechard,
and furious with her spouse for his polite attention to that beautiful
woman. The apothecary advanced the opinion that little red-haired
women were preferable to tall, dark women, who, like fine horses, were
always in the stable, he said. He gave proofs of his sincerity, no
doubt, for Mme. Postel was very sweet to him next day.

"We may be easy," Eve said to her mother and Marion, whom she found
still "in a taking," in the latter's phrase.

"Oh! they are gone," said Marion, when Eve looked unthinkingly round
the room.

One league out of Angouleme on the main road to Paris, Kolb stopped.

"Vere shall we go?"

"To Marsac," said David; "since we are on the way already, I will try
once more to soften my father's heart."

"I would rader mount to der assault of a pattery," said Kolb, "your
resbected fader haf no heart whatefer."

The ex-pressman had no belief in his son; he judged him from the
outside point of view, and waited for results. He had no idea, to