leton covered with marks of violence, fairly quivered
with anger. She choked so that she could not speak. In another minute
she had resumed her wet rags.

"Voila!" she finally cried, pointing to the discarded garments. "At
least you can never say that I asked for them or didn't return them!"

"Mon Dieu!" The woman was overwhelmed,--breathless.

To be misunderstood is often the bitterest thing to bear in this life.
Madame Therese and little Fouchette were suffering simultaneously from
this evil.

"Take 'em away!"

"But listen, child! I----"

"Take 'em away!" she screamed.

Tartar rose with an ominous growl and looked from his mistress to the
woman.

"We don't need 'em, do we, Tartar? No! Let them take their gall and
honey with 'em. Yes! They make us tired. Yes!"

To all of these observations--somewhat heavily weighted with barrier
billingsgate--Tartar showed his approval by wagging his tail knowingly
and by covering the small face bent down to him with canine kisses.

"Better come away, madame," said an agent, in a low voice, to the
stupefied woman thus assailed. He laughed at her discomfiture. "It is
waste kindness and waste time. You can't do anything with that sort of
riffraff. It's only a stray cat fed to scratch you. They're a bad
lot."

The "bad lot" had overheard this police philosophy, and it confirmed
her pre-existing opinion of the police.

Monsieur le Commissaire was a grave and burly gentleman of middle
life, with iron-gray hair and moustache, and eyes that seemed to read
their object through and through. He pulled this moustache
thoughtfully as he listened to the report of the river police agent,
all the time keeping the eyes upon the diminutive but defiant child
before him. When he had learned everything,--including the scene in
the station,--he said, abruptly,--

"Come in here, my child. Don't be afraid,--nobody's going to hurt you.
Yes, bring the dog. Brave dog! Splendid fellow! Come! I'd like to own
that dog, now,--I would, indeed!" he observed, as he closed the door
of his private office; "but I suppose you wouldn't part with him for
the world now, would you?"

"N-no. But he isn't mine, monsieur," she replied, regretfully.

"No? What a pity! Then perhaps I could buy him, eh?"

"I--I don't know. Monsieur Podvin----"

She stopped suddenly. But the magistrate was looking abstractedly over
her head and did not appear to notice her slip of the tongue. He was
thinking. It gave little Fo