e gang. Besides,
he can't get away. I may even have committed an error in arresting that
woman. My master will say that I am not to be trusted. He placed one of
his friends in my charge, and this is what has happened. I knew that the
young man's life was in deadly peril, and yet I let him enter a house
in the course of erection; why, I might as well have cut his throat
myself."

In a terrible state of anxiety, Palot presented himself at the hospital,
and asked for the young man who had just been brought in.

"You mean Number 17?" returned one of the assistant-surgeons. "He is in
a most critical state; we fear internal injuries, fracture of the skull,
and--in fact, we fear everything."

It was two days before Andre recovered consciousness. It was midnight
when he first woke again to the realities of life. At a glance he
guessed where he was. He felt pain when he endeavored to turn over, but
he could move his legs and one arm.

"How long have I been here, I wonder?" he thought.

He tried to think, but he was weak, and thoughts would not come at his
command, and in a few seconds he dropped off to sleep again; and when
he awoke, it was broad day; the ward was full of life and motion, for
it was the hour of the house surgeon's visit. He was a young man still,
with a cheerful face, followed by the band of students. He went from bed
to bed, explaining cases, and cheering up the sufferers. When Andre's
turn came, the surgeon told him that his shoulder was put out, his arm
broken in two places, a bad cut on his head, while his body was one mass
of bruises; but, for all that, he was in luck to have got off so easily.
Andre listened to him with but a vague understanding of his meaning,
for, with the return of reason, the remembrance of Sabine had come, and
he asked himself what would become of her while he was confined to his
bed in the hospital. As this thought passed through his mind, he uttered
a faint groan. One of the students, a stout person, with red whiskers, a
white tie, and a rather shabby hat, who looked as if he had just arrived
from the country, stepped up to his bed, and leaning over the patient,
murmured, "Lecoq." Andre opened his eyes wide at the name.

"M. Lecoq," gasped he, wondering at the excellence of the disguise.

"Hush, who knows who is watching us? I come to give your mind ease,
which will do you more good than all the doctor's stuff. Without in any
way committing you, I have seen M. de Mussidan, an