shouted. "Go it! Don't give up!" And so on.

The police-cyclists proved, however, to be good runners. They took no
heed of the men's jeers. One of their colleagues had been shot;
therefore they intended to arrest his assailant, alive or dead.

Indeed, the elder of the two men had drawn his heavy revolver and fired
at Ansell in return.

"Coward!" cried the men, reproachfully. "You can't catch the man, so
you'd shoot him down. Is that the justice we have in France?"

On went the hunted thief, and after him the two men, heedless of such
criticism, for they were used to it.

At last, as they neared the bridge, Ralph Ansell felt himself nearly
done. He was out of breath, excited; his face scarlet, his eyes starting
out of his head.

He was running along the river-bank, and within an ace of arrest, for
the two men had now out-run him.

They were within a dozen feet of his heels, one of them with a heavy,
black revolver in his hand.

Should he give up, or should he make still one more dash--liberty or
death?

He chose the latter, and ere his pursuers were aware of his intention,
he halted on the stone edge of the embankment.

For a second he paused, and laughing back triumphantly at the agents,
who had cornered him, he raised his hands above his head and dived into
the swiftly flowing stream.

The men who had chased him drew up instantly, and the elder, raising his
weapon, fired at the thief's head as it appeared above the water. Three
times he fired, and had the satisfaction of seeing the head disappear
beneath the surface close to the dark shadow of the bridge.

That he had wounded him was plainly evident. Therefore, in satisfaction,
the two men stood and watched to see the fugitive rise again.

But they watched in vain.

If he did rise, it was beneath the great bridge, where the dark shadow
obscured him, for it was not yet daylight.

Ralph Ansell, alias "The American," and alias half-a-dozen other names,
known in criminal circles in Paris, London, and New York, sank in the
swift, muddy Seine flood--and disappeared.

CHAPTER XIII.

SISTERS IN SILENCE.

Just before eleven o'clock on the following morning two sisters of the
Order of Saint Agnes, one of the religious Orders which devote
themselves to nursing the poor, were passing through the Tuileries
Gardens, sombre figures in their ample plain, black habits, black
head-dresses, and deep, white collars, their hands beneath their gowns
and gaze