"Do you recognize him?"

"Not at all."

"Are you sure that he does not belong to your regiment?"

"I can not say for certain: there are some conscripts at the Depot whom
I have never seen. But I am ready to swear that he had never formed
part of the 2d battalion--which, by the way, is mine, and in which I am
sergeant-major."

Lecoq, who had hitherto remained in the background, now stepped forward.
"It might be as well," he suggested, "to note the numbers marked on the
other articles of clothing."

"That is a very good idea," said the commissary, approvingly.

"Here is his shako," added the young police agent. "It bears the number
3,129."

The officials followed Lecoq's advice, and soon discovered that each
article of clothing worn by the unfortunate man bore a different number.

"The deuce!" murmured the sergeant; "there is every indication--But it
is very singular."

Invited to consider what he was going to say, the brave trooper
evidently made an effort to collect his intellectual faculties. "I would
stake my epaulets that this fellow never was a soldier," he said at
last. "He must have disguised himself to take part in the Shrove Sunday