th bewildered eyes.

"You can understand," he continued, with a look full of homely
shrewdness, "that we on the bench have plenty of time to think over all
that goes on under our eyes, while the gentlemen in court are arguing
with each other."

Eve went home in despair over her useless effort. That evening at seven
o'clock, Doublon came with the notification of imprisonment for debt.
The proceedings had reached the acute stage.

"After this, I can only go out after nightfall," said David.

Eve and Mme. Chardon burst into tears. To be in hiding was for them a
shameful thing. As for Kolb and Marion, they were more alarmed for David
because they had long since made up their minds that there was no guile
in their master's nature; so frightened were they on his account,
that they came upstairs under pretence of asking whether they could do
anything, and found Eve and Mme. Chardon in tears; the three whose life
had been so straightforward hitherto were overcome by the thought that
David must go into hiding. And how, moreover, could they hope to escape
the invisible spies who henceforth would dog every least movement of a
man, unluckily so absent-minded?

"Gif montame vill vait ein liddle kvarter hour, she can regonnoitre
der enemy's camp," put in Kolb. "You shall see dot I oonderstand mein
pizness; for gif I look like ein German, I am ein drue Vrenchman, and
vat is more, I am ver' conning."

"Oh! madame, do let him go," begged Marion. "He is only thinking of
saving his master; he hasn't another thought in his head. Kolb is not
an Alsacien, he is--eh! well--a regular Newfoundland dog for rescuing
folk."

"Go, my good Kolb," said David; "we have still time to do something."

Kolb hurried off to pay a visit to the bailiff; and it so fell out that
David's enemies were in Doublon's office, holding a council as to the
best way of securing him.

The arrest of a debtor is an unheard-of thing in the country, an
abnormal proceeding if ever there was one. Everybody, in the first
place, knows everybody else, and creditor and debtor being bound to meet
each other daily all their lives long, nobody likes to take this odious
course. When a defaulter--to use the provincial term for a debtor, for
they do not mince their words in the provinces when speaking of this
legalized method of helping yourself to another man's goods--when a
defaulter plans a failure on a large scale, he takes sanctuary in Paris.
Paris is a kind of City of Re