."

The door was shut.

"What the devil made you bawl out which way we were going before these
people?" said the Schoolmaster. "If the thing were found out to-morrow,
we might be traced and discovered. Young man,--young man, you are very
imprudent!"

The coach was already in motion. Rodolph answered:

"True; I did not think of that. But with my cigar I shall smoke you like
herrings; let us have a window open."

And, joining the action to the words, Rodolph, with much dexterity, let
fall outside the window the morsel of paper, folded very small, on which
he had hastily written a few words in pencil under his blouse. The
Schoolmaster's glance was so quick, that, in spite of the calmness of
Rodolph's features, the ruffian detected some expression of triumph,
for, putting his head out of the window, he called out to the driver:

"Whip behind! whip behind! there is some one getting up at the back of
the coach!"

The coach stopped, and the driver, standing on his seat, looked back,
and said:

"No, master, there is no one there."

"_Parbleu!_ I will look myself," replied the Schoolmaster, jumping out
into the street.

Not seeing any person or anything (for since Rodolph had dropped the
paper the coach had gone on several yards), the Schoolmaster thought he
was mistaken.

"You will laugh at me," he said, as he resumed his seat, "but I don't
know why I thought some one was following us."

The coach at this moment turned round a corner, and Murphy, who had not
lost sight of it with his eyes, and had seen Rodolph's manoeuvre, ran
and picked up the little note, which had fallen into a crevice between
two of the paving-stones.

At the end of a quarter of an hour the Schoolmaster said to the driver
of the hackney-coach:

"My man, we have changed our minds; drive to the Place de la Madelaine."

Rodolph looked at him with astonishment.

"All right, young man; from hence we may go to a thousand different
places. If they seek to track us hereafter, the deposition of the
coachman will not be of the slightest service to them."

At the moment when the coach was approaching the barrier, a tall man,
clothed in a long white riding-coat, with his hat drawn over his eyes,
and whose complexion appeared of a deep brown, passed rapidly along the
road, stooping over the neck of a high, splendid hunter, which trotted
with extraordinary speed.

"A good horse and a good rider," said Rodolph, leaning forward to the
door of the c