he late physical struggle. The latter had
invoked the energy, the courage, and the superhuman strength and
endurance to meet it,--had roused the fire of conscious manhood. Now
the sick soul revolted at its own folly. The props of self-respect had
been knocked away, and he lay prone, humiliated, deprived of the
initial courage to rise and hope.

The chief cause of this self-degradation lay in the fact that he had
grievously wronged the only one in the world he had found worth
loving,--the one sweet being for whom he would have willingly
sacrificed life. The fact that this wrong was by and in thought alone
did not lessen the horrible injustice of it.

The more Jean thought of these things the more sick at heart he was,
the more hopeless his love became, the more desperately dark the
future appeared. There seemed to be nothing left but misery and death.

This train of bitterness was interrupted by a violent wrangle between
the occupants of neighboring cells. A prisoner across the way had
shouted "Vive l'armee!" Another responded by the gay chanson,--

"Entre nous, l'armee du salut,
Elle n'a jamais eu d'autre but
Que d'amasser d' la bonne galette."

It came from his next-door neighbor, and was the familiar voice of the
saturnine George Villeroy.

"Shut your mouth, rascal!" yelled the guard, rapping the cell door
with his sword bayonet.

A few minutes later the van was stopped, the rear door opened, and one
by one the prisoners, bloody, torn, and bedraggled, were handed out
and hustled not very gently by two police agents through a heavily
grilled doorway into a room already crowded with victims of law and
order. All of these were yet to be called before the commissaire and
interrogated in turn, and by him either held or discharged. A good
many were both hatless and coatless, and altogether they certainly
bore a riotous and suspicious look.

In the crowd near the desk where they were led to be registered Jean
met his old friend Villeroy.

"Oho!" exclaimed the latter, laughingly.

"Oh, yes; it is I, my friend."

"Pinched this time, hein?"

"So it seems."

"And in what company?"

"Yours, I suppose," retorted Jean.

"Good company!" said Villeroy. "Kill any--any agents?"

"No,--no!" said Jean, who did not relish this subject.

"See Lerouge?"

"N--that is----"

"The miserable!"

"Oh, as for that----"

"Well, he's done for, anyhow."

"Wha-at?"

"His goose is cooked!"

"How is that? N