"You want to stay here, don't you?" said Owen emphatically. "I want to stay here," repeated the old man through grey lips. His face was become the colour of ashes, his hands were cold to the sight. "You want your cousin to go away and not disturb you any more? Answer--answer me." "I want my cousin to go away," Renouf murmured, but in his staring, fading eye were traces of the struggle tearing him within. Owen pressed down the eyelids, made another pass before the face, and rose on his long legs with a sardonic grin. Margot, leaning across a corner of the bed, had watched him with breathless interest. "I b'lieve you're de Evil One himself," she said admiringly. Owen pinched her smooth chin between his tobacco-stained thumb and fingers. "Pooh! nothing but a trick I learned in Paris," said he; "it's very convenient to be able to put a person to sleep now and again." "Could you put any one to sleep?" "Any one I wanted to." "Do it to me then," she begged him. "What use, my girl? Don't you do all I wish without?" She grimaced, and picked at the bed-quilt laughing, then rose and stood in front of him, her round red arms clasped behind her head. But he only glanced at her with professional interest. "You should get married, my dear, without delay. Pierre would be ready enough, no doubt?"--"Bah! Pierre or annuder--if I brought a weddin' portion. You don't tink to provide me wid one, I s'pose?"--"You know that I can't. But why don't you get it from the Tourtels? You've earned it before this, I dare swear." It was now that the housekeeper came up, and took down to Louisa Poidevin the message given above. But first she was detained by Owen, to assist him in getting his patient into bed. The old man woke up during the process, very peevish, very determined to get to town. "Well, you can't go till to-morrow den," said Mrs. Tourtel; "your cousin has gone home, an' now you've got to go to sleep, so be quiet." She dropped all semblance of respect in her tones. "Come, lie down!" she said sharply, "or I'll send Margot to tickle your feet." He shivered and whimpered into silence beneath the clothes. "Margot tells him 'bout witches, an ogres, an scrapels her fingures 'long de wall, till he tinks dere goin' to fly 'way wid him," she explained to Owen in an aside. "Oh, I know Margot," he answered laconically, and thought, "May I never lie helpless within reach of such fingers as hers." He took a step and stumbled over a portmanteau lying open at his feet. "Put your mischievous paws to some use," he told the girl, "and clear these things away from the floor;" then remembering his rival Le Lièvre; "if the old fool had really got away to town, it would have been a nice day's work for us all," he added.