The other paused before an alley door with iron bars to the upper portion. He pulled a leather thong hanging out of a hole, and this opened the door.
"Come quickly," he called to the youth, who hesitated on the threshold, and he closed the alley door after them.
At the end of a few steps up the dark passage, Gilbert stumbled on the lower step of a black, steep flight of stairs. Used to the locality, the old
gentleman had gone up a dozen steps. Gilbert rejoined him and stopped only when he did, on a landing worn by feet, on which opened two doors. The stranger pulled a hare's foot hanging at one, and a shrill bell tinkled inside the room.
A woman some fifty years of age appeared, and she and the man spoke together:
"Is it very late, Therese?" asked the latter
timidly.
"A nice hour to come to supper, Jacques!" snarled the woman.
"Come, come, we will make up for the delay," said the one called Jacques, shutting the door and taking the collecting case from Gilbert's hands.
"Have we a messenger boy here?" exclaimed the old woman: "We only wanted him to complete the merry company. So you can no longer do so much as carry your heap of weeds and grass? Master Jacques does the grand with a boy to carry his trash—I beg his pardon, he is becoming quite a great nobleman."