saw Guida pass the window. With a hungry instinct for the morbid they
stole to the doorway and looked down the Rue d'Driere after her. The
Master was sympathetic, for had he not in his fingers at that moment a
bill for a hundred and twenty livres odd? The way the apprentice craned
his neck, and tightened the forehead over his large, protuberant eyes,
showed his intense curiosity, but the face was implacable. It was like
that of some strong fate, superior to all influences of sorrow, shame, or
death. Presently he laughed--a crackling cackle like new-lighted
kindling wood; nothing could have been more inhuman in sound. What in
particular aroused this arid mirth probably he himself did not know.
Maybe it was a native cruelty which had a sort of sardonic pleasure in
the miseries of the world. Or was it only the perception, sometimes
given to the dullest mind, of the futility of goodness, the futility of
all? This perhaps, since the apprentice shared with Dormy Jamais his
rooms at the top of the Cohue Royale; and there must have been some
natural bond of kindness between the blank, sardonic undertaker's
apprentice and the poor beganne, who now officially rang the bell for the
meetings of the Royal Court.

The dry cackle of the apprentice as he looked after Guida roused a
mockery of indignation in the Master. "Sacre matin, a back-hander on the
jaw'd do you good, slubberdegullion--you! Ah, get go scrub the coffin
blacking from your jowl!" he rasped out with furious contempt.

The apprentice seemed not to hear, but kept on looking after Guida, a
pitiless leer on his face. "Dame, lucky for her the Sieur died before he
had chance to change his will. She'd have got ni fiche ni bran from
him."

"Support d'en haut, if you don't stop that I'll give you a coffin before