than ever. The mere ring of his voice, was clear enough evidence of that.
Raising her face toward the ceiling, she asked:
"Are you up there, Patin?"
Patin made no answer.
Then she left the house, and, with a horrible fear that seemed to freeze her very heart, climbed the ladder, threw back the shutter of the window, looked into the room, saw nothing, entered, searched, and found nothing.
Seating herself upon a bundle of straw she gave way to tears, but while she sat there sobbing, transpierced by a weird and breathless terror, in her chamber below she heard Patin going over his story. His anger seemed to have subsided, he was calmer, and this was what he was saying:
"Dirty weather! High wind! Dirty weather! I've had no breakfast, name of a name!"
She shouted to him through the ceiling:
"Here I am, Patin; I'm going to make the soup for you. Don't be angry, I'm coming." And she hastened down the ladder. There was no one in the room.
She felt her strength failing her, as if Death had touched her with his finger, and was about to take to her heels and ask protection from the neighbors when the voice, right at her ear, shouted:
"I've had no breakfast, name of a name!"
And there was the parrot in his cage, watching her with his round, sly, wicked eye.
She looked at him, too, as if her senses were leaving her, muttering:
"Ah! it's you!"
