a straight line. With the most consummate audacity,
this dangerous child had just gleaned, under the mask of guileless
tenderness and apprehension for his father, information most important
for the furtherance of the schemes of the Chouette and Schoolmaster. He
had ascertained during the last few minutes that the part of the
building where he slept was only occupied by Madame Georges,
Fleur-de-Marie, an old female servant, and one of the farm-labourers.
Upon his return to the room he was to share with the blind man,
Tortillard carefully avoided approaching him. The former, however, heard
his step, and growled out:

"Where have you been, you vagabond?"

"What! you want to know, do you, old blind 'un?"

"Oh, I'll make you pay for all you have made me suffer this evening, you
wretched urchin!" exclaimed the Schoolmaster, rising furiously, and
groping about in every direction after Tortillard, feeling by the walls
as a guide. "I'll strangle you when I catch you, you young fiend--you
infernal viper!"

"Poor, dear father! How prettily he plays at blind-man's buff with his
own little boy," said Tortillard, grinning, and enjoying the ease with
which he escaped from the impotent attempts of the Schoolmaster to seize
him, who, though impelled to the exertion by his overboiling rage, was
soon compelled to cease, and, as had been the case before, to give up
all hopes of inflicting the revenge he yearned to bestow on the impish
son of Bras Rouge.

Thus compelled to submit to the impudent persecution of his juvenile
tormentor, and await the propitious hour when all his injuries could
safely be avenged, the brigand determined to reserve his powerless wrath
for a fitting opportunity of paying off old scores, and, worn out in
body by his futile violence, threw himself, swearing and cursing, on the
bed.

"Dear father!--sweet father!--have you got the toothache that you swear
so? Ah, if Monsieur le Cure heard you, what would he say to you? He
would give you such penance! Oh, my!"

"That's right!--go on!" replied the ruffian, in a hollow and suppressed
voice, after long enduring this entertaining vivacity on the part of the
young gentleman. "Laugh at me!--mock me!--make sport of my calamity,
cowardly scoundrel that you are! That is a fine, noble action, is it
not? Just worthy of such a mean, ignoble, contemptible soul as dwells
within that wretched, crooked body!"

"Oh, how fine we talk! How nice we preach about being generous, a