the room No. 19 ready for its occupant? Everything quite in order? Capital. Then we would have the fire lighted at once, and we would support No. 19 upstairs to his apartment. Oh, he had grown stronger on the breezes of the Mediterranean, but there was still much to be desired. Just now, the fatigues of a long journey, and sleeplessness, were telling upon him; but with repose and quiet he would soon recuperate. An undermining sort of malady, though. What malady? Well, something constitutional-debilitated frame-took after his parents. Mr. Bingham had known his young friend's father well, and it was exactly the same kind of physique-ainsi, voyez ! Oh, but he was not always prostrated like this. The vigour he would exhibit sometimes would even astonish his medical advisers-and they were of the best. Repose he needed, and tranquillity-tranquillity and judicious nursing. Luckily, he could pay well. The invalid understood little of these explanations, it seemed. He lay back languidly, enveloped in his rugs, and hardly for a single moment unclosed his eyes.

"How pale he looks, the poor young gentleman; and how drawn his features are!"

"Ah, you may well say so-yes, indeed;" acquiesced Mr. Bingham, who had seen to that matter before he started with his young friend for the Hôtel des Nations, and who stood for a minute or two critically studying his own handiwork.

The early servants were beginning to sweep the corridors, as the new arrivals passed along. On the secondfloor, a citizen of the Republic who had unmistakably the scowl of him who nourishes in secret dreams of an anarchical Utopia, was collecting, with a moody resignation, pairs of boots thrown outside the bedroom doors.

He treated the boots less roughly than, perhaps, could he have had his way, he would have treated their unconscious owners. And yet, as they proceeded slowly down the corridor towards No. 19, the visitors observed him kick one or two pairs savagely, as though their elegance offended him. He spat, indeed, on some: they had blue silk linings, high heels, and innumerable buttons; and, as the visitors moved by, he turned and stared insolently at them, with undisguised contempt and hatred. The spectacle of the invalid brought to his face a sneer of gratification and of the bitterest malignity.

"A subscriber to the Lanterne?" asked Mr. Bingham. "Oh, worse than that!" replied their conductor smilingly, and still turning over in his pocket the piece of gold given him by this affable old gentleman. "Grégoire is our black-flag politician. If you could hear him talk downstairs, in the kitchen, about the next rising of the people! I'm advanced, myself; I want the Commune, but I don't go so far as Grégoire, in the means. He'd begin by a massacre of all the persons staying in the hotel-all except the foreigners, that is; and then all the servants who refused to join his revolutionary group should be marched into the street, in front there, and shot. He wants to see all the well-to-do classes exterminated, and then to have everybody do every description of work by turns. All that I fear, monsieur, is one thing: that Grégoire may some day lose his patience and change his doctrine. And that is why I have ventured to trouble monsieur with such long details after monsieur's generosity, and monsieur being a foreigner—indeed, an English, who are not cruel to the working man. Grégoire might be driven one day by his hatred to put his theory into execution; justifying theft, as we call it, Grégoire might one day commit

theft. And that—ah, but that would change our sentiments towards our confrère! Just imagine, for one minute, how we should all be compromised! I say nothing against advanced views-monsieur is perhaps conservative in his own country? No?-but I don't see that all the rest of us should possibly 'incur suspicion because we have a confrère whose political school denies the rights of property. No, monsieur! I have a young nephew who would like to take his place, and who seeks to enter a good establishment. Anything, therefore, that monsieur might miss from his room should be mentioned. Monsieur will pardon me?-and this is in confidence. But of course in these observations I study alone the interest of monsieur and of the establishment."

Left to themselves at last, in No. 19, Mr. Bingham and his invalid companion alike underwent a marked alteration of demeanour. The invalid pitched his hat across the room, stretched his arms, and gaped. His elderly friend drew his chair up to the recently-lighted fire. "What was he talking about all that time, grandpa?” inquired the invalid.

"Oh, it's too long to repeat. But there's something in it that might turn out useful." Mr. Bingham hummed a little tune and stared into the fireplace.

"Lucky we had that snack before we started, grandpa. But I shall soon be hungry again—and I'm thirsty, now, I give you the tip. Ain't you?”

"Now, Bat, you just listen to me," said the other, without paying any attention to this hint. "I'm paying most of the expenses of this little affair, and I expect you to do the best you can for me. You've got to do your best, to-day. It's for your own good as well as mine." Passenger from Scotland Yard,

II

"All right, grandpa; don't you be uneasy. If it's in my line, I'll do it. Is it here I'm to go to work?" "On one of those two doors; and in the meantime you must not be heard. On the other side of one of these doors you're going to find the Wilmot diamonds." "What- ?"

66

-Just so! I brought you away this morning for no other reason."

"Grandpa, old Clements ain't in it with you!—no, nor Byde from Scotland Yard. And as for me and Sir John-well, there! Bar accidents, and I shall do it, if it's to be done at all. But if I'm to go to work in here with any confidence I must know that you're outside on duty!" The speaker had adopted now as low a tone as his companion. He threw open his roomy ulster, and unwound his woollen scarf; and the weazen face and slight proportions were those of Finch, alias Walker. He locked the door by which they had entered.

Some time elapsed before they heard their neighbours move in either of the rooms adjoining. The chamber they were occupying belonged properly to a complete suite; but, as often happens in the Paris hotels, the several apartments had been let off singly; inter-communication being arrested by the locked doors, which are usually hidden by tapestry, curtains, or a massive wardrobe. The suite can be restored at will, either wholly or in part. A convenient device for the hotel-keeper, the system proves less agreeable for his tenants. One is often an involuntary auditor; one is often unwittingly overheard. Eaves-droppers are well housed in these hotels.

"Which is it?" murmured Mr. Finch, indicating the opposite doors, to the right and to the left of the windows.

His companion nodded in the direction of a mahogany

toilette-table, to the right. It had been placed against the door communicating with No. 21, which was the spacious chamber at the end of the corridor, to the left hand, allotted to Brother Neel.

"Key in the lock on the other side?" demanded Mr. Finch. His companion rose, and moved silently towards the toilette-table. A curtain nailed above the door and descending to the ground concealed the lock from their view, and in the dull light of the morning Mr. Bingham, as he held the curtain away, could not satisfy himself on the point. "Strike a match," whispered Mr. Finch. Grandpa shook his head; their neighbour might be awake at this moment, and might hear them. It was just as well that Brother Neel should still suppose the adjoining room unoccupied. "Hear!" muttered Mr. Finch; "he won't hear this, I'll lay a thousand!"

In another instant he held a small flame in the hollow of his hand. Noiseless matches formed part of Mr. Finch's stock-in-trade.

"Door locked, and the key not on the other side," whispered Finch, alias Walker, after an extremely knowing examination. He helped to move the toilette-table slightly, produced a second little flame, and passed it up and down the edge of the door. "No lower bolt on the other side," he pronounced; "and let's hope there's no higher one. Door opens this way."

They replaced the piece of furniture against the curtain. Presently a stir in the far room announced the awakening of, at any rate, one of their two neighbours. He appeared to be a French gentleman with a retentive memory for the refrains of Paris concert halls. " "Thérèse, Thérèse"-he threw off encouragingly at intervals, as he