n a small
bed near a window, and the concierge told her who I was. She received me
kindly, and after having made me sit down in front of her, she told me
that hearing from her concierge that I was exerting myself in my
brother's behalf, she had something to tell me which would demonstrate
that Caffie's assassin was not the man whom the law had arrested and
detained. The evening of the assassination she was in this same room,
lying on this same bed, before this same window, and after having read
all day, she reflected and dreamed about her book, while listlessly
watching the coming of twilight in the court, that already obscured
everything in its shadow. Mechanically she had fixed her eyes on the
window of Caffie's office opposite. Suddenly she saw a tall man, whom she
took for an upholsterer, approach the window, and try to draw the
curtains. Then Caffie rose, and taking the lamp, he came forward in such
a way that the light fell full on the face of this upholsterer. You
understand, do you not?"

"Yes," murmured Saniel.

"She saw him then plainly enough to remember him, and not to confound him
with another. Tall, with long hair, a curled blond beard, and dressed
like a gentleman, not like a poor man. The curtains were drawn. It was
fifteen or twenty minutes after five. And it was at this same moment that
Caffie was butchered by this false upholsterer, who evidently had only
drawn the curtains so that he might kill Caffie in security, and not
imagining that some one should see him doing a deed that denounced him as
the assassin as surely as if he had been surprised with the knife in his
hand. On reading the description of Florentin in the newspapers when he
was arrested, Madame Dammauville believed the criminal was found--a tall
man, with long hair and curled beard. There are some points of
resemblance, but in the portrait published in the illustrated paper that
she received, she did not recognize the man who drew the curtains, and
she is certain that the judge is deceived. You see that Florentin is
saved!"

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

For the rest of his life he would be the prisoner of his crime
In his eyes everything was decided by luck
Looking for a needle in a bundle of hay
Neither so simple nor so easy as they at first appeared

CONSCIENCE

By HECTOR MALOT

BOOK 3.

CHAPTER XXIV

HEDGING

As he did not reply to this cry of triumph, she looked at him in
surpr