Then the priest stooped, and with the skirt of his cassock wiped the
child's face.

"There," he said to the woman, "take him home, for I hear the gendarmes
coming."

Indeed, the trotting of horses and the clank of the long swinging sabres
could be heard on the road below the village, and one by one the
onlookers dropped away, leaving the Abbe Susini alone at the foot of the
church steps.




CHAPTER II.


CHEZ CLEMENT.

"Comme on est heureux quand on sait ce qu'on veut!"


It was the dinner hour at the Hotel Clement at Bastia; and the event was
of greater importance than the outward appearance of the house would
seem to promise. For there is no promise at all about the house on the
left-hand side of Bastia's one street, the Boulevard du Palais, which
bears, as its only sign, a battered lamp with the word "Clement" printed
across it. The ground floor is merely a rope and hemp warehouse. A small
Corsican donkey, no bigger than a Newfoundland dog, lives in the