“In the name of the law!”
The editor of “The Pilot” had become whiter than his shirt.
“That’s what I was afraid of,” he said. “Thaller has got ahead of me; and perhaps I may be lost.”
Meantime he did not lose his wits. Quick as thought he took out of a drawer a package of letters, threw them into the fireplace, and set fire to them, saying, in a voice made hoarse by emotion and anger,
“No one shall come in until they are burnt.”
But it required an incredibly long time to make them catch fire; and M. Saint Pavin, kneeling before the hearth, was stirring them up, and scattering them, to make them burn faster.
“And now,” said M. de Tregars, “will you hesitate to deliver up the Baron de Thaller into the hands of justice?”
He turned around with flashing eyes.
“Now,” he replied, “if I wish to save myself, I must save him too. Don’t you understand that he holds me?”
And, seeing that the last sheets of his correspondence were consumed,