"None in the world, Jean," he returned promptly, "if you have your trading-permit with you. But who is the good savage with you?"

Nobody had told me anything of a trading-permit, and I fought for time.

"You call him good with justice, monsieur— By the way, what is your name?"

"They call me Joncaire," he said with a trace of grimness.

"Joncaire! Mort de ma vie!"

And I appealed with all the precision my memory would permit to the calendar of the saints.

"The very man I have been searching for!"

"What? How is that?" he asked.

"Ah, but that is a tale! I can not believe it now! Am I in very truth on French soil once more?"

"This is the Magazin Royal," he returned. "As for French soil, mon brave, I do not see how you could have been off it."