“‘This is much better than sleeping in the fields,’ he remarked
    cheerily as we entered:  ‘shall I make you a fire?’

“‘No, thank you, but let me go into the other room.’  My reason for this was that its sofas and chairs had some pretensions to comfort, being ‘first class.’  He went to open the connecting door.  It was locked.

“’This is the only room that is open:  I am sorry.  Wait a moment:  I will bring something to make a pillow, and you can sleep like a top.’  He went out, and returned with an old coat, which he folded for me, and which, after covering it with my handkerchief, made a tolerable resting-place for my head.  My bed was a hard bench.

“‘Now,’ said my protector in a tone of much satisfaction—­’now, you will be well. Voila un bon gite!  Both these other doors are fastened, and this one you can lock after me.  Very early I will come and take you part of the way back, and by daylight you can easily find the rest yourself. Bonne nuit, mademoiselle:  dormez bien.’  He went to the door, and taking the key from the outside put it inside.  It would not turn.  The lock had been made to work with two keys, and the other was absent.

“‘I will tell you what I will do,’ said my friend, not in the least discomfited:  ’I will lock the door and take the key with me.  I must go up the road about two miles on my beat, but you can feel quite safe:  no one can get in while I am gone.  There is another watchman on the road:  he might come while I am away, and—­and raise a row.  It is best to lock you up.’  He nodded his head with great complacency at his good management, and prepared to leave me.  I could suggest nothing better.  I was at the end of my resources, and had to accept my fate.  It would be interesting to know what the Pompadour or Queen Elizabeth would have done under the circumstances, wouldn’t it?

“It was with no pleasant feeling that I saw the door shut, heard the key turned, then withdrawn:  the lantern glimmered for a moment through the window, and I was left in the darkness a prisoner.  Thoroughly a prisoner, for none of the three doors had keys on my side, and the windows, with their tiny panes of ground glass, were high above the floor.  Then, too, the old man had insisted on speaking in a whisper, and walked about on tiptoe.  Who were those persons he evidently feared to waken?  Persons near by, of course.  Probably they carried the missing keys and could enter at any moment.  And the other watchman?  What if he should come, and, this being the room allotted to himself and companion, refuse to be barred out?  Those other unknowns would be aroused by his knocking, and rush in to seek an explanation.  If I were found there, should I be taken before the police as a vagabond?  Or imagine a fire—­a fire and no one knowing that I am here!  A fire and no means of escape!  My friends losing all trace of me,