ast
moment; but tell me all about Ruffard and Godet."

"You are, and you always will be, our boss; I have no secrets from you,"
replied la Pouraille. "My money is in the cellar at la Gonore's."

"And you are not afraid of her telling?"

"Why, get along! She knows nothing about my little game!" replied la
Pouraille. "I make her drunk, though she is of the sort that would never
blab even with her head under the knife.--But such a lot of gold----!"

"Yes, that turns the milk of the purest conscience," replied Jacques
Collin.

"So I could do the job with no peepers to spy me. All the chickens
were gone to roost. The shiners are three feet underground behind some
wine-bottles. And I spread some stones and mortar over them."

"Good," said Jacques Collin. "And the others?"

"Ruffard's pieces are with la Gonore in the poor woman's bedroom, and
he has her tight by that, for she might be nabbed as accessory after the
fact, and end her days in Saint-Lazare."

"The villain! The reelers teach a thief what's what," said Jacques.

"Godet left his pieces at his sister's, a washerwoman; honest girl, she
may be caught for five years in La Force without dreaming of it. The pal
raised the tiles of the floor, put them back again, and guyed."

"Now do you know what I want you to do?" said Jacques Collin, with a
magnetizing gaze at la Pouraille.

"What?"

"I want you to take Madeleine's job on your shoulders."

La Pouraille started queerly; but he at once recovered himself and stood
at attention under the boss' eye.

"So you shy at that? You dare to spoil my game? Come, now! Four murders
or three. Does it not come to the same thing?"

"Perhaps."

"By the God of good-fellowship, there is no blood in your veins! And I
was thinking of saving you!"

"How?"

"Idiot, if we promise to give the money back to the family, you will
only be lagged for life. I would not give a piece for your nut if we
keep the blunt, but at this moment you are worth seven hundred thousand
francs, you flat."

"Good for you, boss!" cried la Pouraille in great glee.

"And then," said Jacques Collin, "besides casting all the murders on
Ruffard--Bibi-Lupin will be finely cold. I have him this time."

La Pouraille was speechless at this suggestion; his eyes grew round, and
he stood like an image.

He had been three months in custody, and was committed for trial, and
his chums at La Force, to whom he had never mentioned his accomplices,
had given him