t is important that he should receive
it before eleven o'clock. You promised to obey me implicitly. Remember
your oath.

"Sinbad the Sailor."

The young girl uttered a joyful cry, raised her eyes, looked round to
question the messenger, but he had disappeared. She cast her eyes
again over the note to peruse it a second time, and saw there was a
postscript. She read:--

"It is important that you should fulfil this mission in person and
alone. If you go accompanied by any other person, or should any one else
go in your place, the porter will reply that he does not know anything
about it."

This postscript decreased greatly the young girl's happiness. Was there
nothing to fear? was there not some snare laid for her? Her innocence
had kept her in ignorance of the dangers that might assail a young girl
of her age. But there is no need to know danger in order to fear it;
indeed, it may be observed, that it is usually unknown perils that
inspire the greatest terror.

Julie hesitated, and resolved to take counsel. Yet, through a singular
impulse, it was neither to her mother nor her brother that she applied,
but to Emmanuel. She hastened down and told him what had occurred on the
day when the agent of Thomson & French had come to her father's, related
the scene on the staircase, repeated the promise she had made, and
showed him the letter. "You must go, then, mademoiselle," said Emmanuel.

"Go there?" murmured Julie.

"Yes; I will accompany you."

"But did you not read that I must be alone?" said Julie.

"And you shall be alone," replied the young man. "I will await you at
the corner of the Rue de Musee, and if you are so long absent as to make
me uneasy, I will hasten to rejoin you, and woe to him of whom you shall
have cause to complain to me!"

"Then, Emmanuel?" said the young girl with hesitation, "it is your
opinion that I should obey this invitation?"

"Yes. Did not the messenger say your father's safety depended upon it?"

"But what danger threatens him, then, Emmanuel?" she asked.

Emmanuel hesitated a moment, but his desire to make Julie decide
immediately made him reply.

"Listen," he said; "to-day is the 5th of September, is it not?"

"Yes."

"To-day, then, at eleven o'clock, your father has nearly three hundred
thousand francs to pay?"

"Yes, we know that."

"Well, then," continued Emmanuel, "we have not fifteen thousand francs
in the house."

"What will happen then?"

"Why, if to-day bef