La Souris was kneeling before the basket, holding to the light a pillow-slip, when Jean passed directly behind him. With a studied carelessness, the boy deliberately tripped over the man's foot, lost his grip on the huge tureen, and skilfully managed to pour the entire steaming contents down the back of the unsuspecting municipal! With a hideous yell, La Souris dropped the linen and sprang to his feet. "Oh! Pardon! pardon, Citizen! It was an accident!" shrieked Jean, assuming a well-feigned fright and dashing past him into the courtyard. La Souris, frenzied by the blistering of his back, and furious with rage at its perpetrator, tore after him, longing only to lay his hands on the agile lad. Round and round they flew, Jean ducking, doubling and evading with the skill of an accomplished Parisian _gamin_, while the soldiers gathered about laughing and applauding the race. La Souris panted and shrieked for vengeance, but he was no match for this agile lad, and he stopped at last, exhausted by his exertion and his very real pain. "Someone call a doctor!" he groaned. "I haven't an inch of skin left on my back!" Jean, the wily, was the first and most ardent to rush off at this command, and fetch the Temple surgeon. La Souris, faint with suffering, was removed to his house in a cab, having forgotten all about the basket which had long since been quietly and thankfully removed. During the excitement and noise, when everyone had rushed to the yard to witness the chase, the sick child had been carried to the attic and hidden away in a long-unused half-boarded-up lumber room. The basket was returned to Mère Clouet, and the plot so far was safe, thanks to the timely intervention of Jean. He was the hero of the hour that night at the Brotherhood, and thoroughly did he enjoy that honourable position. "But you've no idea," he declared, "how Caron and I worked to get that soup heated to the proper boiling pitch! I was watching at the window, when I wasn't cramming wood in the fire, and I certainly thought La Souris would have everything out of that basket before it was ready! It was Caron who thought of the soup!" "Yes, but no one could have carried it out so well as Jean!" insisted the admiring Caron. "Whoever thought that La Souris would turn up just this day! The Evil One himself must have prompted him! Well, he's out of the way now for a spell, and that's a mercy!"