the coiners, and he had never
failed yet in any enterprise he undertook. One day he presented
himself to his chief with a countenance so elated that that penetrating
functionary said to him at once--

"You have heard of our messieurs!"

"I have: I am to visit them to-night."

"Bravo! How many men will you take?"

"From twelve to twenty to leave without on guard. But I must enter
alone. Such is the condition: an accomplice who fears his own throat too
much to be openly a betrayer will introduce me to the house--nay, to the
very room. By his description it is necessary I should know the exact
locale in order to cut off retreat; so to-morrow night I shall surround
the beehive and take the honey."

"They are desperate fellows, these coiners, always; better be cautious."

"You forget I was one of them, and know the masonry." About the same
time this conversation was going on at the bureau of the police, in
another part of the town Morton and Gawtrey were seated alone. It
is some weeks since they entered Paris, and spring has mellowed into
summer.

The house in which they lodged was in the lordly quartier of the
Faubourg St. Germain; the neighbouring streets were venerable with
the ancient edifices of a fallen noblesse; but their tenement was in a
narrow, dingy lane, and the building itself seemed beggarly and ruinous.
The apartment was in an attic on the sixth story, and the window, placed
at the back of the lane, looked upon another row of houses of a better
description, that communicated with one of the great streets of the
quartier. The space between their abode and their opposite neighbours
was so narrow that the sun could scarcely pierce between. In the height
of summer might be found there a perpetual shade.

The pair were seated by the window. Gawtrey, well-dressed,
smooth-shaven, as in his palmy time; Morton, in the same garments with
which he had entered Paris, weather-stained and ragged. Looking
towards the casements of the attic in the opposite house, Gawtrey
said, mutteringly, "I wonder where Birnie has been, and why he has not
returned. I grow suspicious of that man."

"Suspicious of what?" asked Morton. "Of his honesty? Would he rob you?"

"Rob me! Humph--perhaps! but you see I am in Paris, in spite of the
hints of the police; he may denounce me."

"Why, then, suffer him to lodge away from you?"

"Why? because, by having separate houses there are two channels of
escape. A dark night, and a ladde