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"This is the place," said he; while it rained so fast that the water began to run off his hat. "Jam your tile over your eyes, and follow me. You will want a twenty-franc piece to shut the old woman's mouth. After that, it's easy."

He led the way into a bit of a bar, where four or five shabby customers were drinking beer and talking to women who matched them down to the ankles. But we weren't there more than a moment, for after a word in French lingo to the chap who served the drink, we passed on to a small parlor which overlooked a bit of a yard. Here a squat little woman, who didn't appear to have washed her face for a fortnight, was in talk with a girl who had a guitar in her hand—a poor, bespangled, squalid-looking wretch, who made her living, I don't doubt, by capering about before the scum in the bar. They left off when we came in, and then Jim fell to parleying with the woman, and a fine noise they made of it.

"She thinks you're a nark," said he to me in the middle of it. "Give us the twenty-franc piece, and see if that will cool her."

I handed him over the money, and they got to work again. This time the woman took it different; and when I'd whispered to him to promise her twenty francs more when we were through, she left off talking of a sudden, and led us down some dark stairs to a stinking kitchen where I wouldn't have housed a dog. Two minutes after we were out in the back yard, and she had left us.