"Positive," he replied. "I have made the most explicit inquiries on the subject both of the clerk Dubarle, and of the woman-servant." Just then the clerk returned, out of breath with haste, I noticed, and I took my leave without even now affording the young gentleman so clear a view of my face as he was evidently anxious to obtain. "No female acquaintance!" thought I, as I re-entered the private room of the tavern I had left an hour before. "From whom came, then, these scraps of perfumed note-paper I have found in his desk, I wonder?" I sat down and endeavored to piece them out, but after considerable trouble, satisfied myself that they were parts of different notes, and so small, unfortunately, as to contain nothing which separately afforded any information except that they were all written by one hand, and that a female one. About two hours after this I was sauntering along in the direction of Stoke-Newington, where I was desirous of making some inquiries as to another matter, and had passed the Kingslaw Gate a few hundred yards, when a small discolored printed handbill, lying in a haberdasher's shop window, arrested my attention. It ran thus: "Two guineas reward.--Lost, an Italian gray-hound. The tip of its tail has been chopped off, and it answers to the name of Fidèle." Underneath, the reader was told in writing to "inquire within." "Fidèle!" I mentally exclaimed. "Any relation to M. le Breton's fair correspondent Fidèle, I wonder?" In a twinkling my pocket-book was out, and I reperused by the gas-light on one of the perfumed scraps of paper the following portion of a sentence, "_ma pauvre Fidèle est per_--" The bill, I observed, was dated nearly three weeks previously. I forthwith entered the shop, and pointing to the bill, said I knew a person who had found such a dog as was there advertised for. The woman at the counter said she was glad to hear it, as the lady, formerly a customer of theirs, was much grieved at the animal's loss. "What is the lady's name?" I asked. "I can't rightly pronounce the name," was the reply. "It is French, I believe; but here it is, with the address, in the day-book, written by herself."