CHAPTER I.
A snow-storm was raging with such vigor that any one who chanced to be passing along the silent thoroughfare might well have believed himself in St.Petersburg instead of in Paris, in the Rue des Ours, a side street leading into the Avenue St.Martin.The street, never a very busy one, was now almost deserted, as was also the avenue, as it was yet too early for vehicles of various sorts to be returning from the theatre.
The street-lamps on the corners had not yet been lighted.

In front of one of those old-fashioned houses which belong to a former Paris a heavy iron lantern swung, creaking in the wind, and, battling with the darkness, shed flickering rays of light on the child who, with a faded red cotton shawl wrapped about her, was cowering in the deep doorway of the house.

From time to time there would emerge from the whirling snowflakes the dark form of a man clad as a laborer.

He would walk leisurely toward the doorway in which the shivering child was concealed, but would turn when he came to the circle of light cast on the snowy pavement by the swinging lantern, and retrace his steps, thus appearing and disappearing at regular intervals.

Surely a singular time and place for a promenade! The clocks struck ten--the hour which found every honest dweller within the Quartier St.Martin at home.