across the room, the door of which
Marie had left open, and descended the stairs. He had almost gained
the courtyard into which the stairs had conducted, when he heard voices
below by the porter's lodge.

"The police have discovered a gang of coiners!"

"Coiners!"

"Yes, one has been shot dead! I have seen his body in the kennel;
another has fled along the roofs--a desperate fellow! We were to watch
for him. Let us go up-stairs and get on the roof and look out."

By the hum of approval that followed this proposition, Morton judged
rightly that it had been addressed to several persons whom curiosity
and the explosion of the pistols had drawn from their beds, and who were
grouped round the porter's lodge. What was to be done?--to advance was
impossible: and was there yet time to retreat?--it was at least the only
course left him; he sprang back up the stairs; he had just gained the
first flight when he heard steps descending; then, suddenly, it flashed
across him that he had left open the window above--that, doubtless, by
that imprudent oversight the officer in pursuit had detected a clue
to the path he had taken. What was to be done?--die as Gawtrey had
done!--death rather than the galleys. As he thus resolved, he saw to the
right the open door of an apartment in which lights still glimmered
in their sockets. It seemed deserted--he entered boldly and at once,
closing the door after him. Wines and viands still left on the table;
gilded mirrors, reflecting the stern face of the solitary intruder;
here and there an artificial flower, a knot of riband on the floor, all
betokening the gaieties and graces of luxurious life--the dance, the
revel, the feast--all this in one apartment!--above, in the same house,
the pallet--the corpse--the widow--famine and woe! Such is a great city!
such, above all, is Paris! where, under the same roof, are gathered such
antagonist varieties of the social state! Nothing strange in this; it
is strange and sad that so little do people thus neighbours know of each
other, that the owner of those rooms had a heart soft to every distress,
but she did not know the distress so close at hand. The music that had
charmed her guests had mounted gaily to the vexed ears of agony and
hunger. Morton passed the first room--a second--he came to a third,
and Eugenie de Merville, looking up at that instant, saw before her
an apparition that might well have alarmed the boldest. His head was
uncovered--his dark