him with her portly figure, but Laguitte
looked at her with that quiet, resolute expression well known to women
who are familiar with bodily chastisement.

"Leave us," he said curtly.

She hesitated for the space of a second. She almost felt the gust of
the expected blow, and then, white with rage, she joined Phrosine in the
outer room.

When the two men were alone Major Laguitte walked up to Burle, looked at
him and, slightly stooping, yelled into his face these two words: "You
pig!"

The captain, quite dazed, endeavored to retort, but he had not time to
do so.

"Silence!" resumed the major. "You have bamboozled a friend. You palmed
off on me a lot of forged receipts which might have sent both of us to
the gallows. Do you call that proper behavior? Is that the sort of trick
to play a friend of thirty years' standing?"

Burle, who had fallen back in his chair, was livid; his limbs shook as
if with ague. Meanwhile the major, striding up and down and striking
the tables wildly with his fists, continued: "So you have become a thief
like the veriest scribbling cur of a clerk, and all for the sake of
that creature here! If at least you had stolen for your mother's sake it
would have been honorable! But, curse it, to play tricks and bring the
money into this shanty is what I cannot understand! Tell me--what are
you made of at your age to go to the dogs as you are going all for the
sake of a creature like a grenadier!"

"YOU gamble--" stammered the captain.

"Yes, I do--curse it!" thundered the major, lashed into still greater
fury by this remark. "And I am a pitiful rogue to do so, because it
swallows up all my pay and doesn't redound to the honor of the French
army. However, I don't steal. Kill yourself, if it pleases you; starve
your mother and the boy, but respect the regimental cashbox and don't
drag your friends down with you."

He stopped. Burle was sitting there with fixed eyes and a stupid air.
Nothing was heard for a moment save the clatter of the major's heels.

"And not a single copper," he continued aggressively. "Can you picture
yourself between two gendarmes, eh?"

He then grew a little calmer, caught hold of Burle's wrists and forced
him to rise.

"Come!" he said gruffly. "Something must be done at once, for I cannot
go to bed with this affair on my mind--I have an idea."

In the front room Melanie and Phrosine were talking eagerly in low
voices. When the widow saw the two men leaving the diva