e or four hundred francs could not possibly be
to him or her what they would be to us just now! Why, even _one_ hundred
would get us nicely round the corner again!"

For Madame Bernard was a sensible little woman with no exaggeration
about her. But it is growing colder, and still her husband does not
return. She must gather the remnants of the fire together, and baby at
all costs must go to bed, and if Bernard does not soon come she herself
must go too. She cannot risk catching a bad cold herself just as Paul is
recovering from an attack of bronchitis. And she is turning to open a
door leading into the one bedroom of their _appartement_, when the
well-known sound of a latch-key in the door of the tiny vestibule
arrests her.

"Bernard, at last!" she exclaimed with a sigh of relief.

A man, young still, though older than she, entered. He was thin and pale
and poorly clad. But his face was intelligent and pleasant, and he had
an undoubted air of respectability. And to his wife's accustomed eye,
late as it was and tired as he should have been, his face had a flush of
excitement on it which half prepared her for news of some kind.

"At last," he repeated. "Yes, I am very late, but I will not grumble as
I did this evening when we were told we must work overhours, for it is
thanks to the lateness that I have--prepare yourself, my girl--I have
found the owner of the watch!"

"The owner of the watch!" repeated his wife. "How? where? But you had
not the watch with you? You have not given it back? Not without----" and
the little woman hesitated; her husband seemed so pleased, so excited.
"If possibly it is a poor person," she reflected, "Bernard is quite
capable of giving it back with delight for nothing but a word of thanks!
Yet what would not forty, nay, even fifty francs be to us just now."
Still she did not like to say anything to damp his pleasure. But he read
her misgiving--he had perhaps a little enjoyed teasing her!

"Calm yourself, my child," he said, though Madame Bernard was certainly
much less excited than he; "it is all right. When I said I had found the
owner, I meant to say I know _where_ to find him, or her. Twenty minutes
ago I knew as little as you do at this moment. But coming along the
Boulevart, suddenly the light of a gas-lamp flaring up a little fell on
a yellow paper on the wall--had it been in the daytime I should never
have seen it, it was so badly placed--'fifty francs reward.' I scarcely
thought I