“The simple facts,” he said--as if reasoning with himself, as the one most needing the lesson of reason--“are that you have defied the authority of the plebiscite.” “Good heavens!” cried Ned. The officer coming upright again, his lids, in the act, seemed to open mechanically, like those of a doll. “I must tell you plainly,” he said, “that, to my mind, your interference was questionable and suspicious.” “Believe me, sir,” said Ned politely, “that, in quoting your own mind, you use an empty argument.” “You state,” continued the commissary, “that this man is your servant. Who ever heard of a respectable person taking a Cagot for a servant!” There rose murmured acclamations from the bystanders. This was the first really apposite thing uttered by the officer. He seemed greatly stimulated by the applause, and moved thereby to clinch a fine situation. “I shall remand you,” he said quite briskly, “for inquiries to be made into the truth of your statements.” Ned stared, then burst out in a fury-- “It is monstrous, monsieur; it is ridiculous! You have only to listen a moment to what I say--to accept my references to a dozen of the first standing in the city, to assure yourself of my identity.” The commissary waved his hand. Obedient to the gesture, a couple of Guards closed upon their captive. “I take nothing from you,” he said. “In accepting your references I might constitute myself a receiver of stolen goods.” It was an inspiration. He looked up, with a gasp, into the faces of those about him, to read in their expressions if it were possible that he himself could have said this thing. It was true he had. There must be no anticlimax. “Take the prisoner away!” he said, smilingly self-conscious, as if he were ordering a table to be cleared for a fresh surprise-course. Ned, protesting, threatening, fulminating, was forced from the room, hurried down a passage, and thrust into a little dark chamber that led therefrom. The sound of a key grating in its lock fell disagreeably upon his ears. Only a thin wash of light reached him from a single barred window high up under the ceiling. A couple of crippled chairs--together, it might be said, with an almost palpable smell of drains--formed the only furniture of the room. The wall-paper moulted its gaudy dyes, or hung in strips from the plaster; the floor was littered with perished rags of parchment. Evidently the closet had been at one time some office connected with the prison records--a dreary mad reflection to any one remembering to what recent use those records had been put. Ned sank down upon one of the chairs, and, for the moment, looked about him quite stunned and aghast. * * * * * * * *