Oliver felt as though a thunder-bolt had fallen. Twice or thrice he strove to speak, but his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth, and refused to utter a sound; he could only nod his head. The very worst thing that he feared had happened to him. He was so frightened that it gave him the stomachache. What was to befall him next? It was through a veil of dizzy terror that he looked into that face shut up with him in the narrow confines of the coach. All had become darkness again; but in the humming silence the eyeballs of his soul still saw that strangely smiling face as the eyes of his body had seen it when the lantern light flashed upon it. He crouched in his corner, shrunk together like a rabbit before the face of a serpent. Again there came another traversing flash of light, and then he saw that the face had widened to a grin. "And you know that I am not your rich uncle from the Americas?" Oliver nodded his head once more. The other began laughing. "Come," said he; "you are frightened. But I am not so bad as you take me to be, or Gaspard either, for the matter of that, though he has strange habits. Also you saw what he did last night?" For the third time Oliver nodded his head. His throat grew tighter and tighter, and he felt as though he would choke. "Very well," said the other. "Then you understand that Gaspard and I are not to be trifled with. We are now at the end of our journey, and there is something that I would have you do for me. It was for that that I hunted you up at Flourens, and it was for that that I brought you here to Paris. If you do my bidding, no harm shall happen to you; if not--" The hand which rested upon Oliver's knee gripped it like the clutch of a hawk. "Do you understand?" "Yes," croaked Oliver, finding his voice at last. "Very good," said the other. "Now when we stop I shall get out first of all, then you, then Gaspard. He will follow close behind us, and if you make so much as one noise, one little outcry--" The speaker stopped abruptly. They were now in the black gloom of a crooked, unlighted street, with high walls beetling upon either side, but even in the blackness of the gloom Oliver could feel that the other made a motion with his hands as though drawing a sack or bag over his head, and he shrank together closer than ever. Then suddenly the coach stopped. The next moment the door was flung open, and there stood Gaspard waiting. Oliver's companion stepped out upon the pavement. "Come," said he, and there was that in his voice that told Oliver that there was but one thing to do--to obey. The poor lad's legs and arms moved with a jerky, spasmodic movement, as though they did not belong to him, and Gaspard had to help him out of the coach, or else he would have fallen upon the pavement.