Steps. Sudden throwing of door open. Pause.

"Come out, American."

As I came out, toting bed and bed-roll, I remarked: "I'm sorry to leave
you," which made T-c furiously to masticate his insignificant moustache.

Escorted to _bureau_, where I am turned over to a very fat _gendarme_.

"This is the American." The v-f-g eyed me, and I read my sins in his
porklike orbs. "Hurry, we have to walk," he ventured sullenly and
commandingly.

Himself stooped puffingly to pick up the segregated sack. And I placed my
bed, bed-roll, blankets and ample _pelisse_ under one arm, my 150-odd
pound duffle-bag under the other; then I paused. Then I said, "Where's my
cane?"

The v-f-g hereat had a sort of fit, which perfectly became him.

I repeated gently: "When I came to the _bureau_ I had a cane."

"I don't give a damn about your cane," burbled my new captor frothily,
his pink evil eyes swelling with wrath.

"I'm staying," I replied calmly, and sat down on a curb, in the midst of
my ponderous trinkets.

A crowd of _gendarmes_ gathered. One didn't take a cane with one to