burdened beast, and presently he came up to the house. Smoke was rising
from one of the chimneys, and he halted at the door, tied the rope he
held to a rickety gate post, and knocked gently.

A bright-faced peasant woman came to the open door and shook her head at
the sight of the wares with which the donkey was laden.

"We want none of your truck, my boy," she said. "I have my own garden.
You are not a Monogasque."

"No, signora," replied the boy, flashing his teeth with a smile. "I am
from San Remo, but I have come to live in Monte Carlo to sell vegetables
for my uncle, and he told me I should find a lodging here."

She looked at him dubiously.

"I have one room which you could have, boy," she said, "though I do not
like Italians. You must pay me a franc a night, and your donkey can go
into the shed of my brother-in-law up the hill."

She led the way down a flight of ancient stairs and showed him a tiny
room overlooking the valley.

"I have one other man who lives here," she said. "An old one, who sleeps
all day and goes out all night. But he is a very respectable man," she
added in defence of her client.

"Where does he sleep?" asked the boy.

"There!" The woman pointed to a room on the opposite side of the narrow
landing. "He has just come in, I can hear him." She listened.

"Will madame get me change for this?" The boy produced a fifty-franc
note, and the woman's eyebrows rose.

"Such wealth!" she said good-naturedly. "I did not think that a little
boy like you could have such money."

She bustled upstairs to her own room, leaving the boy alone. He waited
until her heavy footsteps sounded overhead, and then gently he tried the
door of the other lodger. Mr. Jaggs had not yet bolted the door, and the
spy pushed it open and looked. What he saw satisfied him, for he pulled
the door tight again, and as the footfall of old Jaggs came nearer the
door, the donkey-boy flew upstairs with extraordinary rapidity.

"I will come later, madame," he said, when he had received the change.
"I must take my donkey into Monte Carlo."

She watched the boy and his beast go down the road, and went back to the
task of preparing her lodger's breakfast.

To Monte Carlo the cabbage seller did not go. Instead, he turned back
the way he had come, and a hundred yards from the gate of Villa Casa,
Mordon, the chauffeur, appeared, and took the rope from his hand.

"Did you find what you wanted, mademoiselle?" he asked.

Jean no