ecastle had our salt fish, and broke our teeth with worm-eaten
hard-tack."

"So you had no reason to hate him?"

"None; as little as anybody else."

Seated upon a wretched little footstool, his paper on his knees, an
inkhorn in his hand, the clerk was rapidly taking down the questions and
the answers. The magistrate made him a sign that it was ended, and then
said, turning to the murderer,--

"That is enough for to-day. I am bound to tell you, that, having so far
only kept you as a matter of precaution, I shall issue now an order for
your arrest."

"You mean I am to be put in jail?"

"Yes, until the court shall decide whether you are _guilty_ of murder,
or of involuntary homicide."

Crochard, surnamed Bagnolet, seemed to have foreseen this conclusion: at
least he coolly shrugged his shoulders, and said in a hoarse voice,--

"In that case I shall have my linen changed pretty often here; for, if I
had been wicked enough to plot an assassination, I should not have been
fool enough to say so."

"Who knows?" replied the magistrate. "Some evidence is as good as an
avowal."

And, turning to the clerk, he said,--

"Read the deposition to the accused."

A moment afterwards, when this formality had been fulfilled, the
magistrate and the old doctor left the room. The former looked extremely
grave, and said,--

"You were right, doctor; that man is a murderer. The so-called friend,
whose name he would not tell us, is no other person than the rascal
whose tool he is. And I mean to get that person's name out of him, if
M. Champcey recovers, and will give me the slightest hint. Therefore,
doctor, nurse your patient."

To recommend Daniel to the surgeon was at least superfluous. If the old
original was inexorable, as they said on board ship, for those lazy ones
who pretended to be sick for the purpose of shirking work, he was all
tenderness for his real patients; and his tenderness grew with the
seriousness of their danger. He would not have hesitated a moment
between an admiral who was slightly unwell, and the youngest midshipman
of the fleet who was dangerously wounded. The admiral might have waited
a long time before he would have left the midshipman,--an originality
far less frequent than we imagine.

It would have been enough, therefore, for Daniel to be so dangerously
wounded. But there was something else besides. Like all who had ever
sailed with Daniel, the surgeon, also, had conceived a lively interest
in h