the stand against him--the wife whom, he had imagined, he would never
see again.

Any one could have seen that Elizabeth de Moreno was a good woman. Her
father's name, she said, was Nichaud, and she had first met the prisoner
twenty-three years ago in the village of Dalk, in the Department of the
Tarne, where, in 1883, he had been convicted and sentenced for stealing
bed linen from the Hôtel Kassam. She had remained faithful to him in
spite of his disgrace, and had visited him daily in prison, bringing him
milk and tobacco. On his liberation she had married him and they had
gone to live in Bordeaux. For years they had lived in comfort, and she
had borne him eight children. He had never been to any war and was
neither a general nor, so far as she had known, a friend of Don Carlos.
She had supposed that her husband held some position in connection with
the inspection of railroads, but, in 1902, it had come out that he was
in the business of selling counterfeit railroad tickets, and had
employed a printer named Paul Casignol to print great numbers of
third-class tickets for the purpose of selling them to ignorant soldiers
and artisans. Moreno had fled to America. She had then discovered that
he had also made a practice of checking worthless baggage, _stealing it
himself_ and then presenting claims therefor against the railroad
companies. She had been left without a sou, and the rascal had taken
everything she had away with him, including even the locket containing
the hair of her children. By the time she had finished her story
Moreno's courage had deserted him, the jury without hesitation returned
a verdict of guilty, and the judge then and there sentenced the prisoner
to a term at hard labor in State's prison.

* * * * *