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“Did you see Marie?”

“Yes. She looks as if she had just stumbled over a jackal,” and he laughed.

Lemaire stood for a minute where he was. Then he shouted to Hadj:

“Hadj! A—Hadj!”

The one-eyed keef-smoker came.

“Who has been here to-day?”

“No one. A few have passed the door, but no one has entered.”

“Good business!” said Bouvier, shrugging his shoulders.

“Business!” exclaimed Lemaire, with an oath. “It’s a fine business we do here. Another ten years, and we shan’t have put by ten sous.”

“Perhaps that is why madame has such a face to-night!”

“We’ll see at supper. Now for an absinthe!”

The two men walked stiffly into the inn, put their guns in a corner, went into the arbour that fronted the desert, and sat down by the table.

“Marie!” bawled Lemaire.

He struck his flabby fist down upon the wood.

“Marie, the absinthe!”

Madame Lemaire heard the hoarse shout in the kitchen, and her face went awry again:

“I’d go! I’d go!”

She hissed it under her breath.

“Sacré nom de Dieu! Marie!”

“V’là!”

“The devil! What a voice!” said Bouvier in the arbour.