"Pay attention! One at the barrière, and the other at the corner of the Rue du Petit Banquier. Do not for a minute lose sight of the door of the house, and if you see anything come back at once--at once; you have a key to let yourselves in." The elder daughter grumbled,-- "To stand sentry barefooted in the snow, what a treat!" "To-morrow you shall have beetle-colored silk boots," the father said. They went down the stain, and a few seconds later the sound of the gate closing below announced that they had reached the street. The only persons in the house now were Marius, the Jondrettes, and probably, too, the mysterious beings of whom Marius had caught a glimpse in the gloom behind the door of the unoccupied room. CHAPTER XVII. THE USE OF MARIUS'S FIVE-FRANC PIECE. Marius judged that the moment had arrived for him to return to his observatory. In a second, and with the agility of his age, he was at the hole in the partition, and peeped through. The interior of Jondrette's lodging offered a strange appearance, and Marius was able to account for the peculiar light he had noticed. A candle was burning in a verdigrised candlestick, but it was not this which really illumined the room; the whole den was lit up with the ruddy glow of a brazier standing in the fire-place, and filled with incandescent charcoal; it was the heating-dish which the wife had prepared in the morning. The charcoal was glowing and the heating-dish red; a bluish flame played round it, and rendered it easy to recognize the shape of the chisel purchased by Jondrette, which was heating in the charcoal. In a corner, near the door, could be seen two heaps,--one apparently of old iron, the other of ropes, arranged for some anticipated purpose. All this, to a person who did not know what was going to occur, would have made his mind vacillate between a very simple and a very sinister idea. The room, thus lit up, resembled a forge more than a mouth of hell; but Jondrette, in this light, was more like a demon than a blacksmith.