When all this was being discussed, Barbara thought she might as well
tell about finding the boy in her room, and she mentioned her
suspicions that he and the nocturnal visitor were one and the same
person, and found to her surprise that the Belvoirs had thought the
same. Poor things! Barbara was heartily sorry for them, for it was an
unpleasant occurrence to happen in a _pension_, and might make a
difference to them in future, apart from the fact that they could hear
nothing of the lost money, nor yet of the runaways.

Barbara felt that hitherto her adventures in France had been quite like
a story-book, and knew that when her brother Donald heard of them he
would be making all kind of wonderful plans for the discovery of the
miscreants.

"He would fancy himself an amateur detective at once," she said to her
aunt. Whereupon that lady returned grimly she would gladly become a
detective for the time being if she thought there was any chance of
finding the wretches, but that such people usually hid their tracks too
well. Nevertheless, Barbara noticed that she eyed her fellow-men with
great suspicion, and one day she persisted in pursuing a stout
gentleman with blue glasses, whom she declared was the solicitor in
disguise, till he noticed them and began to be nervously agitated.

"I'm sure it isn't he, aunt," Barbara whispered, after they had
followed him successfully from Notre Dame to St. Etienne, and from
there to Napoleon's Tomb. "He speaks French--I heard him. Besides, he
is too stout for the solicitor."

"He may be padded," Aunt Anne said wisely. "People of that kind can do
anything. There is something in his walk that assures me it _is_ he,
and I _must_ see him without his spectacles."

Barbara followed rather unwillingly, though she could not help thinking
with amusement how the family would laugh when she wrote and described
her aunt in the role of a detective. She was not to be very
successful, however, for, as they were sauntering after him down one of
the galleries of the Museum, the blue-spectacled gentleman suddenly
turned round, and in a torrent of French asked to what pleasure he owed
Madame's close interest, which, if continued, would cause him to call
up a _gendarme_. "If you think to steal from me, I am far too well
prepared for that," he concluded.

"Steal!" Aunt Anne echoed indignantly. "_We_ are certainly not
thieves, sir, whatever _you_ may be." Barbara was thankful that
apparentl