God, there are those ruffians, the
gendarmerie. It's all up. By Jove! yes, it's all up. That is hard,
after all I did at Nuremberg."

"Ludovic!"

"Look here, Linda. Get out at once and take these letters. Make your
way to the Black Bear, and wait for me."

"And you?"

"Never mind me, but do as you're told. In a moment it will be too
late. If we are noticed to be together it will be too late."

"But how am I to get to the Black Bear?"

"Heaven and earth! haven't you a tongue? But here they are, and it's
all up." And so it was. A railway porter opened the door, and behind
the railway porter were two policemen. Linda, in her dismay, had not
even taken the papers which had been offered to her, and Valcarm, as
soon as he was sure that the police were upon him, had stuffed them
down the receptacle made in the door for the fall of the window.

But the fate of Valcarm and of his papers is at the present moment
not of so much moment to us as is that of Linda Tressel. Valcarm was
carried off, with or without the papers, and she, after some hurried
words, which were unintelligible to her in her dismay, found herself
upon the platform amidst the porters. A message had come from
Nuremberg by the wires to Augsburg, requiring the arrest of Ludovic
Valcarm, but the wires had said nothing of any companion that might
be with him. Therefore Linda was left standing amidst the porters on
the platform. She asked one of the men about the Black Bear. He shook
his head, and told her that it was a house of a very bad sort,--of a
very bad sort indeed.

CHAPTER XII

A dozen times during the night Linda had remembered that her old
friend Fanny Heisse, now the wife of Max Bogen, lived at Augsburg,
and as she remembered it, she had asked herself what she would do
were she to meet Fanny in the streets. Would Fanny condescend to
speak to her, or would Fanny's husband allow his wife to hold any
communion with such a castaway? How might she dare to hope that her
old friend would do other than shun her, or, at the very least, scorn
her, and pass her as a thing unseen? And yet, through all the days
of their life, there had been in Linda's world a supposition that
Linda was the good young woman, and that Fanny Heisse was, if not a
castaway, one who had made the frivolities of the world so dear to
her that she could be accounted as little better than a castaway.
Linda's conclusion, as she thought of all this, had been, that it
would be b