publican Guard
cavalry arrived at a trot, their helmets glittering in the increasing
daylight, driving before them a mob which had begun to attack a cafe
on the corner.

A captain, superbly mounted, rode ahead of the advancing line of
horses, warning the throng back into the rue Vilna, up which the mob
now recoiled, sullenly protesting.

Neeland and Sengoun and the two women were forced back with the crowd
as a double rank of steel-helmeted horsemen advanced, sweeping
everybody into the rue Vilna.

Up the street, through the vague morning light, they retired between
ranks of closed and silent houses, past narrow, evil-looking streets
and stony alleys still dark with the shadows of the night.

Into one of these Neeland started with Ilse Dumont, but Sengoun drew
him back with a sharp exclamation of warning. At the same time the
crowd all around them became aware of what was going on in the maze of
dusky lanes and alleys past which they were being driven by the
cavalry; and the people broke and scattered like rabbits, darting
through the cavalry, dodging, scuttling under the very legs of the
horses.

The troop, thrown into disorder, tried to check the panic-stricken
flight; a brigadier, spurring forward to learn the cause of the
hysterical stampede, drew bridle sharply, then whipped his pistol out
of the saddle-holster, and galloped into an _impasse_.

The troop captain, pushing his horse, caught sight of Sengoun and
Neeland in the remains of their evening dress; and he glanced
curiously at them, and at the two young women clad in the rags of
evening gowns.

"_Nom de Dieu!_" he cried. "What are such people as you doing here? Go
back! This is no quarter for honest folk!"

"What are those police doing in the alleys?" demanded Sengoun; but the
captain cantered his horse up the street, pistol lifted; and they saw
him fire from his saddle at a man who darted out of an alley and who
started to run across the street.

The captain missed every shot, but a trooper, whose horse had come up
on the sidewalk beside Neeland, fired twice more after the running
man, and dropped him at the second shot.

"A good business, too," he said calmly, winking at Neeland. "You
_bourgeois_ ought to be glad that we're ordered to clean up Paris for
you. And now is the time to do it," he added, reloading his weapon.

Sengoun said in a low voice to Neeland:

"They're ridding the city of apaches. It's plain enough that they have
orders to