s, but through their chinks streaks
of bluish, shadowy light presaged the coming day. From his lair the boy
looked out at these ghostly fingers of the morning, then his eyes
travelled round the dark room until at last they rested upon his clothes
lying, as he had thrown them, on the floor. He looked at them--the
boots, the coat and trousers, the heavy overcoat--and suddenly some
imperative thought banished sleep from his eyes. He sat up in bed; he
shivered as the cold air nipped his shoulder; then, unhesitatingly, he
slipped from between the sheets and slid out upon the floor.

The room was small; the clothes lay within an arm's length. He shivered
again, stooped, and, picking up the overcoat, dived his hand into the
deep pocket, and drew forth the packet that he had guarded so
tenaciously in the train.

For a moment he stood looking at it in the blue light of the dawn--a
thick brown packet, seven or eight inches long, tied with string and
sealed. Once or twice he looked at it, seemingly lost in reflection;
once or twice he turned it about in his hand as if to make certain it
was intact; then, with a deep sigh indicative of satisfaction, he
stepped back into bed, slipped the packet under his pillow and, with his
fingers faithfully enlaced in the string, fell asleep.

CHAPTER III

It was eleven o'clock when the boy woke. All the excitement of the past
days had culminated in the great exhaustion of the night before.

He had slept as a child might sleep--dreamlessly, happily, unthinkingly.
In that silent hour Nature had drawn him into her wide embrace, lulling
him with a mother's gentleness; and now, in the moment of waking, it
seemed that again the same beneficent agency was dispensing love and
favor, for he opened his eyes upon a changed world. A magician's wand
had been waved over the city during his hours of sleep; the mist and
oppression of the night had disappeared with the darkness. Paris was
under the dominion of the frost.

Instinctively, even before his eyelids lifted, the northern soul within
him apprised him of this change. He inhaled the crisp coldness of the
air with a vague familiarity; he opened his eyes slowly and stared about
the unknown room in an instant of hesitating doubt; then, with a great
leap of the spirit, he recognized his position. Last night--the days and
nights that had preceded it--flooded his consciousness, and in a moment
he was out of bed and pulling back the drab-hued curta