d partly paid in advance, as if
the whole had been a fair commercial operation.

"Now, Crochard," said the lawyer, "I cannot impress it too strongly on
your mind, how important it is for your own interests that you should
tell the truth. Remember, all your statements will be verified. Do you
know whether Chevassat lives in Paris under an assumed name?"

"No, sir! I have always heard him called Chevassat by everybody."

"What? By everybody?"

"Well, I mean his concierge, his servants."

The magistrate seemed for a moment to consider how he should frame his
next question; and then he asked, all of a sudden,--

"Suppose that the--accident, as you call it, had succeeded, you would
have taken ship; you would have arrived in France; you reach Paris; how
would you have found Chevassat to claim your six thousand francs?"

"I should have gone to his house, where I breakfasted with him; and, if
he had left, the concierge would have told me where he lived now."

"Then you really think you saw him at his own rooms? Consider. If you
left him only for a couple of hours, between the time when you first
met him and the visit you paid him afterwards, he might very well have
improvised a new domicile for himself."

"Ah! I did not lie, sir. When dinner was over, I had lost my
consciousness, and I did not get wide awake again till noon on the next
day. Chevassat had the whole night and next morning."

Then, as a suspicion suddenly flashed through Crochard's mind, he
exclaimed,--

"Ah, the brigand! Why did he urge me never to write to him otherwise
than 'to be called for'?"

The magistrate had turned to his clerk.

"Go down," he said, "and see if any of the merchants in town have a
Paris Directory."

The clerk went off like an arrow, and appeared promptly back again with
the volume in question. The magistrate hastened to look up the address
given by the prisoner, and found it entered thus: "_Langlois_, sumptuous
apartments for families and single persons. Superior attendance."

"I was almost sure of it," he said to himself.

Then handing Daniel the paper on which the words "University" and
"Street" could be deciphered, he asked,--

"Do you know that handwriting, M. Champcey?"

Too full of the lawyer's shrewd surmises to express any surprise, Daniel
looked at the words, and said coolly,--

"That is Maxime de Brevan's handwriting."

A rush of blood colored instantly the pale face of Crochard. He was
furious at the ide