f will
work beside you. Hide yourself elsewhere, for if you stay here I will
hound you down, I will see that you have not an hour's peace of your
life. We reds have our ideas, but we are not assassins. We do not sneak
after a man to stab him in the dark, and when we have arms in our hands
we are not to be beaten like curs by an unarmed man."

The other men had shrunk back from him as she spoke. Jean quailed
beneath her torrent of contemptuous words and from the fury in her eyes.
There was no doubting the fact that her charges were true.

"Who drove me to it?" he said sullenly through his swollen lips.

"Who drove you! Drink and your evil temper drove you to it. You wanted
to marry me--me who never gave you a word of encouragement; who knew you
_au fond_, who knew that you were at the best an idle, worthless scamp,
and would never have married you had there been no other living man in
the universe. But enough. I have said what I came to say, and you had
best take warning. Come, father, you have stood this fellow's friend,
and you have been wrong, but you know him now."

Minette passed out through the door Arnold held open for her; her father
and Arnold followed, and the four other men, without a word to Jean
Diantre, went down the stairs after them, leaving him to himself.

CHAPTER IX.

"It is hardly worth while, Minette," Arnold said, when they reached the
street, "the man has had his lesson."

"I could not help it, dear," she said, in a voice so changed from that
in which she had spoken to Jean Diantre, that no one would have
recognized it as the same; "he had tried to kill you, to take you from
me. He thought it was you who had struck him and hated you worse than
ever. It is not because he has failed once that he might fail another
time. I should never have had a moment's peace when you were away from
me, but I think now you will be safe; he will remove his quarters and go
to Villette or to the South side; he will not dare to show his face in
Montmartre again. You are sure you always carry your pistol, Arnold?"

"Yes, I promised you I would and I have done so. I have a small revolver
in each pocket."

"Then in future, when you are out at night promise me always to walk
with one hand in your pocket, holding the butt of your pistol, so that
you can draw and fire instantly. He knows you have pistols and will not
dare to attack you singly, and even should he find two or three villains
as bad as himself y