e hours or so, while I had worked my legs hard.

"Does M. Bernet lodge with you?" my master asked of the landlord. We
were his only patrons at the moment.

"M. Bernet? Him with the eye out?"

"The same."

"Why, no, monsieur. I don't let lodgings. The building is not mine. I
but rent the ground floor for my purposes."

"But M. Bernet lodges in the house, then?"

"No, he doesn't. He lodges round the corner, in the court off the Rue
Clichet."

"But he comes here often?"

"Oh, aye. Every morning for his glass. And most evenings, too."

M. Etienne laid down the drink-money, and something more.

"Sometimes he has a friend with him, eh?"

The man laughed.

"No, monsieur; he comes in here alone. Many's the time I'll standing in
my door when he'll go by with some gallant, and he never chances to see
me or my shop. While if he's alone it's 'Good morning, Jean. Anything in
the casks to-day?' He can no more get by my door than he'll get by
Death's when the time comes."

"No," agreed M. Etienne; "we all stop there, soon or late. Those friends
of M. Bernet, then--there is none you could put a name to?"

"Why, no, monsieur, more's the pity. He has none lives in this quarter.
M. Bernet's in low water, you understand, monsieur. If he lives here, it
is because he can't help it. But he goes elsewhere for his friends."

"Then you can tell us, my man, where he lodges?"

"Aye, that can I," mine host answered, bustling out from behind the bar,
eager in the interest of the pleasant-spoken, open-handed gallant. "Just
round the corner of the Rue Clichet, in the court. The first house on
the left, that is his. I would go with monsieur, only I cannot leave the
shop alone, and the wife not back from market. But monsieur cannot miss
it. The first house in the court. Thank you, monsieur. Au revoir,
monsieur."

In the doorway of the first house on the left in the little court stood
an old man with a wooden leg, sweeping heaps of refuse out of the
passage.

"It appears that every one on this stair lacks something," M. Etienne
murmured to me. "It is the livery of the house. Can you tell me, friend,
where I may find M. Bernet?"

The concierge regarded us without cordiality, while by no means ceasing
his endeavours to cover our shoes with his sweepings.

"Third story back," he said.

"Does M. Bernet lodge alone?"

"One of him's enough," the old fellow growled, whacking out his dirty
broom on the door-post, powdering us with du