But I have known a few iron-visaged, square-jawed women who were so brutally honest that I have most ingloriously fled at the mention of their approach, and solaced myself with a congenial spirit who is in the habit of skirting delicately around painful truth, and a cozy corner in which to abuse the aforesaid iron-visaged carver of helpless humanity, who loves to draw blood with her truth.

[Illustration: "'You mean that Father Anselm helped her to run away?' gasped Matthieu."] "Have another glass?" asked the wood carver.

"Stop at the third doorway in the Rue Tronchet," directed the wood carver as they entered the Place de la Madeleine, and pointing to a hairdresser's sign, he added: "There is her place, up one flight.

When do you expect this wood carver again?"

" "Then I ought to fool the wood carver.

Later, as the heavy Georgian style predominated, there is the stiff ungainly gilt furniture, console tables with legs ornamented with the Greek key pattern badly applied, and finally, as the French school of design influenced our carvers, an improvement may be noticed in the tables and torchéres, which but for being a trifle clumsy, might pass for the work of French craftsmen of the same time.

In a word, he looked the wood carver, every inch of him, and the detective was forced to admit that, if this was a disguise, it was the most admirable one he had ever seen.

"You mean the wood carver?" Coquenil shrugged his shoulders.

"Mr. Wade presents his compliments to Mrs. Damer, and has the honor to inform her that Mr. Skerrett has nominated him carver to the ladies to-day in their host's place.

When a girl slips away from her work at the church and goes to see a man like Paul Coquenil" "Paul Coquenil?" repeated the wood carver blankly.

"Whar did you git such a fine goose?" "Well, now, Pahson," replied the carver of the goose, exhibiting great dignity and reticence, "when you preaches a speshul good sermon I never axes you

Groener was a wood carver, and he stayed a wood carver.

You saw him come out of the confessional, didn't you?" "I was too far away to see his face," replied the other, studying the wood carver closely.