t."

"We are not so black as the devil!" cried the man.

The kindly intention in the words and tones of the charitable couple
won the old lady's confidence. She said that a strange man had been
following her, and she was afraid to go home alone.

"Is that all!" returned he of the red bonnet; "wait for me, citoyenne."

He handed the gold coin to his wife, and then went out to put on his
National Guard's uniform, impelled thereto by the idea of making some
adequate return for the money; an idea that sometimes slips into a
tradesman's head when he has been prodigiously overpaid for goods of no
great value. He took up his cap, buckled on his sabre, and came out in
full dress. But his wife had had time to reflect, and reflection, as not
unfrequently happens, closed the hand that kindly intentions had opened.
Feeling frightened and uneasy lest her husband might be drawn into
something unpleasant, she tried to catch at the skirt of his coat, to
hold him back, but he, good soul, obeying his charitable first thought,
brought out his offer to see the lady home, before his wife could stop
him.

"The man of whom the citoyenne is afraid is still prowling about the
shop, it seems," she said sharply.

"I am afraid so," said the lady innocently.

"How if it is a spy?... a plot?... Don't go. And take the box away from
her----"

The words whispered in the pastry-cook's ear cooled his hot fit of
courage down to zero.

"Oh! I will just go out and say a word or two. I will rid you of him
soon enough," he exclaimed, as he bounced out of the shop.

The old lady meanwhile, passive as a child and almost dazed, sat down
on her chair again. But the honest pastry-cook came back directly.
A countenance red enough to begin with, and further flushed by the
bake-house fire, was suddenly blanched; such terror perturbed him that
he reeled as he walked, and stared about him like a drunken man.

"Miserable aristocrat! Do you want to have our heads cut off?" he
shouted furiously. "You just take to your heels and never show yourself
here again. Don't come to me for materials for your plots."

He tried, as he spoke, to take away the little box which she had slipped
into one of her pockets. But at the touch of a profane hand on her
clothes, the stranger recovered youth and activity for a moment,
preferring to face the dangers of the street with no protector save God,
to the loss of the thing she had just paid for. She sprang to the door,
flung