on the Sceaux road--walking fast. He wore the
clothes of a working man. He was leading a sorry nag.... The man
halted and let the nag go free. A sound had caught his ear--a growling
sound.

He listened intently.

"Did I imagine it?" he murmured.

Again that growling, punctuated by a woman's sharp scream. The man was
off at racing speed towards the van, which was but a hundred yards
away.

"Great Heaven! Shall I arrive too late?" ejaculated the man.

Reaching it, breathless, he glued his ear to the door. The van shook
with the movement and growling of some beast of prey about to spring.

The man drew back, rushed forward, hurled himself against the door and
drove it inwards.

A shot broke the silence of the morning.

The man rolled over the body of the bear, shot dead through the heart.
The man freed himself; escaped the convulsive movement of its limbs,
and crawled towards a crumpled heap huddled in a corner of this tragic
stage. Bobinette's poor face, exposed to view, was slashed and torn:
it bore the dreadful claw-marks of the bear.

The man placed his hand on her heart.

"She lives!" he said softly.

Supporting her with infinite gentleness, the man addressed her in a
voice trembling with emotion:

"Do not be afraid, Bobinette! You are saved! It is Juve who is telling
you so! It is Juve!"

XXXII

FREE AND PRISONER

Isolated in the cell which had served him as dwelling-place for the
past fortnight, Jerome Fandor had had his ups and downs, hours of
deepest depression, hours of violent exasperation when he suffered an
intolerable martyrdom between his four walls--suffered morally and
physically.

Yet his imprisonment had been rendered as tolerable as possible. He
could have his meals brought in from outside and obtain from the
library such books as there were.

How he longed for a talk with Juve; but that detective was rigorously
excluded from the prison. Juve was to be a witness at the trial.

As Fandor was to conduct his own case there were no consultations with
his counsel to relieve the monotony of the days; nor were newspapers
allowed him. He had no friends or relatives to visit and console him
or divert him.

In his sleepless hours Fandor's thoughts would revert to his past, to
the frightful drama of his boyhood, to the assassination of the
Marquise de Langrune, when he, a youth of eighteen, had been
suspected, had even been accused of committing this murder, the
accuser being hi