It was now dusk. A few lamps showed a flame uncongenial with the prevailing light, and the lamp-lighter was seen, now flitting from post to post with his ladder on his shoulder, and now pausing for an instant, with his foot on the lowest rung, to listen. A lamp-lighter was a safe person of whom to make inquiry, M. Gaubion thought;--one who had no interest in commercial squabbles, and would not betray him on account of his foreign speech. Of him, therefore, the Frenchman inquired what was going on; but the man could offer only conjecture. He had not yet lighted the lamps in that direction, and he did not think he should carry his lantern much further till he knew whether they had not fire enough and too much already. M. Gaubion passed on for better satisfaction; and as he threaded his way among the loiterers, runners, and gazers, who began to thicken as he proceeded, he longed for an English tongue for one minute, that he might learn that which every one else seemed now to know. He was glad to perceive a woman's head emerge from a vault, and gaze slowly round, as if at a loss to account for the bustle. He took his stand for a minute within hearing of the inquiry which he hoped she would make. "Why, I say there!" cried she presently, "is there a fire?" The runner applied to shook his head, and passed on. "You, there! Can you tell me what it is if it's not a fire?" The boy snapped his fingers at her, and ran on. "What, are ye all running after you don't know what? What is it, I say?" "Come and see, if you can't ask civilly," growled an old man, making his way on his two sticks as fast as he could. "What care I what's the matter?" muttered the woman, turning to descend once more into the vault. "O, ask this person!" cried M. Gaubion. "He looks as if he could and would tell us." "Ask him yourself, can't ye, instead of watching and listening to what I may say. If you have nothing better to do than that, you might go and see for yourself, I think." As he turned to go away, the lady condescended to make one more effort to satisfy her curiosity. "It is something about the Frenchman, I don't know exactly what," was the reply. "Something about his having smuggled goods while he pretended to weave them. They are looking for him, to give him three groans, or a ride, or a ducking, or something of the sort." "Perhaps they won't have to look very long if they come to the right place," observed the woman, with an ill-natured laugh towards M. Gaubion, who did not stay to hear more. When he arrived at the end of his own street, his first impression was that all was quiet, and the place empty; but a moment convinced him that the dark mass extending up and down from his own house, which he had taken for shadow, was in reality a crowd. The occasional movement of a woman with a white cap, or an apron over her head, showed him what the picture really was; and this was the only stir seen for awhile.