"Is this the fellow?" said the turnkey, pushing me rudely with his foot.
"Yes," replied Boivin, white with fear; "this is the boy; his name is Tristan." The latter words were accompanied with a look of great significance toward me.
"What care we how he is called; let us hear in what manner he came here."
"I can tell you little," said I, staring and looking wildly around; "I must have been asleep and dreaming, too."
"The letter," whispered Boivin to the turnkey—"the letter says that he was made to inhale some poisonous drug, and that while insensible—"
"Bah!" said the other, derisively, "this will not gain credit here; there has been complicity in the affair, Master Boivin. The commissaire is not the man to believe a trumped-up tale of the sort; besides, you are well aware that you are responsible for these 'rats' of yours. It is a private arrangement between you and the commissaire, and it is not very probable that he'll get himself into a scrape for you."
"Then what are we to do?" cried Boivin, passionately, as he wrung his hands in despair.
"I know what I should, in a like case," was the dry reply.
"And that is—?"
"Laisser aller!" was the curt rejoinder. "The young rogue has passed for a curé for the last afternoon; I'd even let him keep up the disguise a little longer, and it will be all the same by this time to-morrow."