here, and here I
stay."

"I'm shot if you do," said the kind Mr. Smith, his face growing redder
and uglier. "Now, will you go out, or will you be thrown out?"

Aristide, who had no desire whatever to be ejected from this snug nest
into the welter of the wet and friendless world, puffed at his cigar,
and looked at his host with the irresistible drollery of his eyes.

"You forget, _mon cher ami_," said he, "that neither the beautiful Miss
Christabel nor her affianced, the Honourable Harry, M.P., would care to
know that the talented Gottschalk got only eight pounds, not even
guineas, for painting that three-thousand-pound picture."

"So it's blackmail, eh?"

"Precisely," said Aristide, "and I don't blush at it."

"You infernal little blackguard!"

"I seem to be in congenial company," said Aristide. "I don't think our
friend M. Poiron has more scruples than he has right to the ribbon of
the Legion of Honour which he is wearing."

"How much will you take to go out? I have a cheque-book handy."

Mr. Smith moved a few steps from the hearthrug. Aristide sat down in the
arm-chair. An engaging, fantastic impudence was one of the charms of
Aristide Pujol.

"I'll take five hundred pounds," said he, "to stay in."

"Stay in?" Mr. Smith grew apoplectic.

"Yes," said Aristide. "You can't do without me. Your daughter and your
servants know me as M. le Baron--by the way, what is my name? And where
is my historic chateau in Languedoc?"

"Mireilles," said M. Poiron, who was sitting grim and taciturn on one of
the dining-room chairs. "And the place is the same, near Montpellier."

"I like to meet an intelligent man," said Aristide.

"I should like to wring your infernal neck," said the kind Mr. Smith.
"But, by George, if we do let you in you'll have to sign me a receipt
implicating yourself up to the hilt. I'm not going to be put into the
cart by you, you can bet your life."

"Anything you like," said Aristide, "so long as we all swing together."

* * * * *

Now, when Aristide Pujol arrived at this point in his narrative I, his
chronicler, who am nothing if not an eminently respectable, law-abiding
Briton, took him warmly to task for his sheer absence of moral sense.
His eyes, as they sometimes did, assumed a luminous pathos.

[Illustration: "I'LL TAKE FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS," SAID HE, "TO STAY IN"]

"My dear friend," said he, "have you ever faced the world in a foreign
country in Decembe