quick!"

He shook his head.

"It will not do, little one," he answered. "Useless. I should only be
run down by black trackers. No. For me, it is finished.... But I am
quite content."

"If you are taken it means death! ... And mine!"

"No. Not that either. You owe me, perhaps, one promise."

"Anything you want of me!"

"I bind you to it!"

"Anything you want me to say!"

"Then you will not die: and you will save yourself from worse than death
the only way still open.... These good sisters are waiting here for you.
Do you understand?"

"I understand!" she sobbed, through her weeping. "I am yours.... I
promise!... Only kiss me once!"

It was Mother Carron who recovered some sort of sanity first among us. It
was Mother Carron who gathered the fainting girl and passed her over to
the charge of the nuns; Mother Carron who had forethought to snatch
one of Carron's jackets from a hook; Mother Carron, finally, who slipped
that jacket onto Bibi-Ri and buttoned it carefully to the chin before
she would order the door unbarred.

"Well, well--so we land her in the church after all," observed that
remarkable woman briskly, at the last. "Chouette, alors! It is honest,
at least.... And now, stupid, open up and admit the happy bridegroom and
let him see what he can see!"

He saw, right enough. He saw as much as was needful. When the door
thrust inward, when his two rogue friends of military surveillants
rushed through, when that tall devil in long black redingote and high
hat, with his flaming yellow eyes and raging front--when M. de Nou
himself, I say, confronted us--there we were properly ranged as the
actors in a perfectly obvious police case of brawl and murder: prisoner,
witnesses, corpus delicti and the succoring clergy: complete.

"What does this mean?" he demanded.

Bibi-Ri faced him--a strange meeting, in truth!

"Me," he said, with his old trick of whimsy. "Only me. Convict 2232.
I've been developing my capabilities a little.... That's all!"

* * * * *

So they guillotined Bibi-Ri. In due course, by due process, he passed
before the Marine Tribunal, before the Commandant and the Procurator
General and the Director and the rest of our salaried philanthropists.
They dealt with him faithfully and of a gray early morning they led him
from the little door of the condemned cell. They marched him out with
his legs hobbled and his hands tied behind his back; with the chaplain
totte