se scoundrels she fainted
away, and these men carried her over their shoulders as if she had been
a bag of flour, perfectly indifferent to her beauty.

Robeccal suddenly bade them halt. They had reached the vile place known
as the Cour de Bretagne, a part of Paris known for its poverty and vice.

"I think it is about time!" grumbled one of Robeccal's men in reply.

"Oh! I suppose you thought you were to be paid for nothing, did you?"

Without heeding the growling of these fellows, Robeccal stepped up to a
door and knocked. It was opened by a person who stood back in the
shadow, and a hurried conversation took place. Satisfied apparently with
what he heard, Robeccal bade his men follow him. They went to
Belleville, which at that time was an excessively pretty place, as
almost all the houses of any pretension had gardens and grounds.
Robeccal had been extremely adroit in diverting suspicion and the
observation of the people they encountered. He now knocked at a door in
a wall half hidden by overhanging ivy.

"Who is there?" called a woman's voice.

"Robec and the kid," was the reply.

The door opened noiselessly on well-oiled hinges.

"Come in, all of you." It was Roulante who spoke.

Francine was at once carried to a little cottage at the foot of a long
garden, where, still unconscious, she was laid on a couch.

Then Robeccal paid his assistants the sum agreed upon. They were not
altogether satisfied, but he managed to get rid of them.

La Roulante was unchanged since the day when she and her lover discussed
the assassination of Iron Jaws.

"I have done well, have I not?" asked Robeccal, with a friendly tap on
the massive shoulders of this monstrosity.

"Her beauty is not marred, I hope?" she asked, anxiously.

"I am not such a fool as that! But I am afraid that the handkerchief was
too tight. She is confoundedly pretty, that is a fact!"

"What is that to you?" asked the giantess, angrily. "Now give me that
bottle."

"What are you going to do?"

"None of your business! Hand it here."

The woman poured out something that looked like wine, and dropped a
spoonful between the girl's lips. She had so much difficulty in doing
so, that Robeccal took a knife from his pocket, and inserted it between
Francine's close shut teeth. As soon as the liquid disappeared down the
girl's throat she started.

"You are not poisoning her?" asked Robeccal.

"Am I a fool? Hark! I hear a carriage. Take this girl up-stairs.