--as she now undoubtedly was.
She then resumed her hat.

"How!" exclaimed Mlle. Fouchette, noting this quiet preparation with
growing astonishment,--"not going out?"

"Yes," replied the girl.

"But, dear, you have not yet given me the address."

"It is unnecessary."

"But, Madeleine!"

"It is unnecessary, Fouchette. I will go and see his--his sister and
lead her to him."

"But, deary!"

"And I will go alone," she added, looking at the other for the first
time.

Unmindful of the wheedling voice of remonstrance, without another
word, and leaving her door wide open and Mlle. Fouchette to follow or
not at her pleasure, the miserable girl gained the street and swiftly
sped away through the falling shadows of the night.

CHAPTER XIV

Jean Marot occupied a cell in a "panier a salade" en route for the
depot, not so much the worse for his recent exciting experience as at
first seemed probable he might be.

There were eight other occupants of the prison-van besides himself,
one of whom was a soldier guard. Five narrow cells ranged along either
side of a central aisle. Each had a solitary small, closely shuttered
breathing-hole opening outside. The guard occupied a seat in the aisle
near the rear door, from which he could survey the door of every cell.
By this arrangement prisoners were kept separate from each other, were
not subjected to a gaping crowd, and ten persons could be safely
escorted by a single guard.

From the half-suppressed murmurs and objurgations that followed every
severe jolt of the wagon, Jean rightly judged that most of the
prisoners were more or less injured. And as the driver drove
furiously, having the fight of way and being pressed with business
this particular Sunday afternoon, there were still louder and more
exhaustive remarks from those who narrowly escaped being run over by
the cellular van.

Jean Marot, however, was too much engrossed with his own miserable
reflections to pay any more than mechanical attention to all of this.
Physically resuscitated and momentarily inflating his glad lungs anew,
he still felt that terrible vice-like grip upon his throat,--the
compression of the fingers of steel that seemed to squeeze the last
drop of blood from his heart.

But it was mental suffocation now. For they were the fingers of her
brother,--the flesh and sinew of the woman he loved! And it was this
love that was being cruelly crushed and strangled.

It was more terrible than t