“Mademoiselle d’Arlange, sir,” replied Albert, “in according me a meeting, trusted in my honour.”

“And you would have died sooner than mention that interview?” interrupted M. Daburon with a touch of irony.  “That is all very fine, sir, and worthy of the days of chivalry!”

“I am not the hero that you suppose, sir,” replied the prisoner simply.  “If I told you that I did not count on Claire, I should be telling a falsehood.  I was waiting for her.  I knew that, on learning of my arrest, she would brave everything to save me.  But her friends might have hid it from her; and that was what I feared.  In that event, I do not think, so far as one can answer for oneself, that I should have mentioned her name.”

There was no appearance of bravado.  What Albert said, he thought and felt.  M. Daburon regretted his irony.

“Sir,” he said kindly, “you must return to your prison.  I cannot release you yet; but you will be no longer in solitary confinement.  You will be treated with every attention due to a prisoner whose innocence appears probable.”

Albert bowed, and thanked him; and was then removed.

“We are now ready for Gevrol,” said the magistrate to his clerk.

The chief of detectives was absent:  he had been sent for from the Prefecture of Police; but his witness, the man with the earrings, was waiting in the passage.

He was told to enter.

He was one of those short, thick-set men, powerful as oaks, who look as though they could carry almost any weight on their broad shoulders.

His white hair and whiskers set off his features, hardened and tanned by the inclemency of the weather, the sea winds and the heat of the tropics.

He had large callous black hands, with big sinewy fingers which must have possessed the strength of a vice.

Great earrings in the form of anchors hung from his ears.  He was dressed in the costume of a well-to-do Normandy fisherman, out for a holiday.

The clerk was obliged to push him into the office, for this son of the ocean was timid and abashed when on shore.

He advanced, balancing himself first on one leg, then on the other, with that irregular walk of the sailor, who, used to the rolling and tossing of the waves, is surprised to find anything immovable beneath his feet.

To give himself confidence, he fumbled over his soft felt hat, decorated with little lead medals, like the cap of king Louis XI. of devout memory, and also adorned with some if that worsted twist made by the young country girls, on a primitive frame composed of four or five pins stuck in a hollow cork.

M. Daburon examined him, and estimated him at a glance.  There was no doubt but that he was the sunburnt man described by one of the witnesses at La Jonchere.

It was also impossible to doubt his honesty.  His open countenance displayed sincerity and good nature.