e is living. You ought to have informed me
candidly of these circumstances, and not have allowed me to go to
useless expense over law proceedings. I have received no answer
to my letter of the 10th of May last. You must not, therefore,
take it amiss if I ask for immediate repayment of the three bills
and the expenses to which I have been put.--Yours, etc.,
"METIVIER."

Eve had heard nothing during these months, and supposed, in her
ignorance of commercial law, that her brother had made reparation for
his sins by meeting the forged bills.

"Be quick, and go at once to Petit-Claud, dear," she said; "tell him
about it, and ask his advice."

David hurried to his schoolfellow's office.

"When you came to tell me of your appointment and offered me your
services, I did not think that I should need them so soon," he said.

Petit-Claud studied the fine face of this man who sat opposite him in
the office chair, and scarcely listened to the details of the case,
for he knew more of them already than the speaker. As soon as he saw
Sechard's anxiety, he said to himself, "The trick has succeeded."

This kind of comedy is often played in an attorney's office. "Why are
the Cointets persecuting him?" Petit-Claud wondered within himself,
for the attorney can use his wit to read his clients' thoughts as
clearly as the ideas of their opponents, and it is his business to see
both sides of the judicial web.

"You want to gain time," he said at last, when Sechard had come to an
end. "How long do you want? Something like three or four months?"

"Oh! four months! that would be my salvation," exclaimed David.
Petit-Claud appeared to him as an angel.

"Very well. No one shall lay hands on any of your furniture, and no
one shall arrest you for four months----But it will cost you a great
deal," said Petit-Claud.

"Eh! what does that matter to me?" cried Sechard.

"You are expecting some money to come in; but are you sure of it?"
asked Petit-Claud, astonished at the way in which his client walked
into the toils.

"In three months' time I shall have plenty of money," said the
inventor, with an inventor's hopeful confidence.

"Your father is still above ground," suggested Petit-Claud; "he is in
no hurry to leave his vines."

"Do you think that I am counting on my father's death?" returned
David. "I am on the track of a trade secret, the secret of making a
sheet of pa