The people before whom Guillaume was anxious not to tell the wood-merchant that he thought him a scoundrel proved to be the Abbé Grégoire and Mère Watrin.

  “Here I am, M. le Maire,” said the former, looking for the wood-merchant with his short-sighted eyes. “Are you ready?”

  “So much ready,” said Guillaume, “that M. le Maire, as you see, is waiting for you on the other side of the door.”

  And he pointed to the wood-merchant who, following his advice, had got out into the open.

  The Abbé neither saw nor understood anything of what had taken place, and passing out in his turn without noticing the warmth of the conversation said, “Good evening, Monsieur Guillaume. May the peace of the Lord descend on this house with the blessing that I give you!”

  “Your servant, Monsieur l’Abbé; your servant, Monsieur le Maire,” said Madame Watrin, following her two guests and making a curtsey at every step. Guillaume’s eyes followed them as long as he could see them, then turning his back on the door with a fling of his shoulders which was habitual with him, he pulled out his pipe, which he filled tightly to the brim, placed it between his two jaws and while he struck the tinder-box, “Good!” he muttered between his teeth, which were so tightly set that his words could scarcely pass between them, “here I am with another enemy; but no matter, there’s no alternative, either one is an honest man or one is not. If you are, some one comes and puts you in a fix, and you can only do as I have done. Good, here is the old woman coming in again; attention, Guillaume!”

  And pressing down with the flint the ignited tinder on the bowl of his pipe, he proceeded to draw from it clouds of smoke, a symbol of the dull anger which darkened his heart and his brow.

  Mère Watrin needed only to cast a glance at her husband to perceive that something exceptional had happened.

  She went and came, turned round and passed before and behind him, but could draw nothing from him but a rather thicker cloud of smoke. At last she determined to be the first to break the silence.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  “What?” rejoined Watrin with a brevity of speech that would have done honour to a Pythagorean.

  Marianne hesitated for a moment. “What is the matter with you?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Why don’t you speak?”

  “Because I have nothing to say.”

  Mère Watrin moved away from the old Forester and again drew near him several times.

  If her husband had nothing to say, evidently she was not in the same frame of mind.

  “Hum!” she ejaculated.

  Watrin took no notice.

  “Guillaume!”

  “Yes?” rejoined the latter.

  “When is the wedding to be?” asked she.

  “What wedding?”

  “Why, Catherine and Bernard’s, to be sure.”

  Watrin felt himself relieved of a great burden, but nevertheless did not let it appear at all.

  “Oh!” he said, resting his hands on his hips and looking her in the face, “so you have come to your senses again?”

  “Tell me now,” she went on, not answering his question, “I think the sooner it is the better.”

  “You don’t say so!”

  “Suppose we fixed it for next week?”

  “And the banns?”

  “We could go to Soissons and get a dispensation.”

  “Good, now you are more in a hurry than I am.”

  “Why, you see,” she said, “it is... it is...”

  “It is? It is? What?”

  “It is that I have never passed such a day before.”

  “Bah!”

  “To part from one another, to die each by ourselves!” and her breast heaved distressingly. “And that after twenty six years of married life!” she added.

  And she burst out sobbing.

  “Your hand, mother,” said Guillaume.

  “Oh, here it is,” cried she, “and with all my heart.”

  Guillaume drew the good old woman to him. “And now,” he said, “kiss me.” Then looking at her, “Why,” he added, “you are the best wife on earth!”

  But he qualified it in a way which our reader himself will not find too severe, “When you choose, I mean, of course.”

  “Oh,” replied the old lady, “I promise you, Guillaume, that from this day on I shall always choose.”

  “Amen!” said Guillaume.

  At this moment François came in again. Any one who had looked at the worthy fellow more closely than did Père Watrin would have seen that he was not in his habitual state of calm self-possession.

  “There!” he ejaculated with the evident intention of making Guillaume notice his presence.

  And in fact the latter turned round.

  “Well,” he asked, “are they packed in and away?”

  “Don’t you hear them?”

  Just at that moment a carriage could be heard rolling along the road.

  “That is they going away.”

  Then, while Guillaume stood listening to the rumbling, which gradually got further and further away, François went and took his gun from the chimney corner. Guillaume saw the action.

  “Why,” he asked, “where are you going?”

  “I am going. Here, I must tell you something; but it is for your own ear alone.” Guillaume toned towards his wife.

  “Wife!” said he. “Eh?”

  “You might as well clear the table; it will be all the more got over before to-morrow.”

  “Why, what am I doing then?” asked she, with an empty bottle under her arm and half a dozen plates in each hand, and going off in the direction of the kitchen, the door of which closed on her.

  Guillaume kept his eyes on her and when she vanished, asked, “What is it?”

  François went close to him and said in a low tone, “It is this; while I was at work putting M. le Maire’s horse to, I heard a gunshot.”

  “In what direction?”

  “In the direction of Corey, as it might be near the Prince’s spring.”

  “And you think it’s some poacher, eh?” asked Guillaume.

  François shook his head.

  “No?”

  “No,” echoed François.

  “Well then, what is it?”

  “Father,” said he, lowering his voice another tone, “I recognized the report of Bernard’s gun.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Watrin in some alarm, for he could not understand for what reason Bernard could have fired a gun at such a time of night.

  “I should know it among fifty,” rejoined François. “You know he loads with rounds of felt or cardboard and that makes a different report from wads of paper.”

  “Bernard’s gun,” Guillaume asked himself, more and more alarmed. “What can that mean?”

  “Ah, yes, what can that mean? That is what I asked myself too.”

  “Listen!” said Guillaume, starting, “I hear a noise.”

  François listened. “It is a woman’s footstep,” he murmured.

  “Catherine’s, perhaps?”

  François nodded a negation.

  “It is an old woman’s step,” he said. “Mademoiselle Catherine walks more lightly than that. That is the step of some one past forty.”

  At the same moment two sharp knocks on the door reached their ears.

  CHAPTER XVIII.

  FRANÇOIS TO THE RESCUE.

  THE two men exchanged glances; there was in the air something like a presage of disaster. During this moment of silence and alarm the name of Monsieur Watrin was heard twice, spoken by some one. Mère Watrin came in at this moment.

  “What is wrong, and who can be calling the old man?” she asked.

  “It is Mother Tellier’s voice,” said Guillaume.

  “Open, wife.”

  Marianne went quickly to the door, opened it and sure enough Mother Tellier, quite out of breath from the pace at which she had come, appeared on the threshold.

  “Good evening, Monsieur Watrin and the company,” said she. “A chair if you please, a chair. I have run every bit of the way from the Prince’s spring.”

  The two men at the mention of the fountain exchanged glances again.

  “And what procures us the pleasure of seeing you at such an hour, Mother Tellier?” asked Guillaume first, in a changed voice.

  But for all answer Mère Tellier put her hand to her throat.

  “Water, for the love of God!” she said. “I am choking.”

  Mère Watrin hastened to fetch the good woman what she asked for. She drank eagerly.

  “Mother,” she said, “now that I can speak, I will tell you what brought me here.”

  “Speak, Mother, speak,” urged Guillaume and Marianne in one breath, while François stood apart, shaking his head sadly.

  “Well,” went on Mother Tellier, “I come on behalf of your son.”

  “On behalf of Bernard?” and “On behalf of my son?” said Guillaume and Marianne together.

  “What has happened to the poor young man?” asked the messenger; “he came into my place an hour ago as pale as death.”

  “Wife!” cried Guillaume, looking at Marianne.

  “Hush, hush!” murmured she, understanding what there was of reproach in this one word.

  “He drank two or three glasses of wine, one after the other. When I say one after the other, I say wrong, he drank them at one go, for he drank from the bottle.”

  This detail alone was enough to frighten Guillaume: to drink from the bottle was a thing so unlike Bernard that to do so indicated a considerable derangement in the balance of his mind.

  “Bernard drank from the bottle!” repeated Guillaume. “Impossible!”

  “And he drank like that without saying a word?” asked Marianne.

  “No,” replied the good woman, “he spoke to me on the contrary like this: ‘Mother Tellier, do me the favour of going as far as the house; you will tell Catherine that I shall write to her soon.’”

  “What, he said that?” cried Mother Watrin.

  “Write to Catherine! And why write to Catherine?” asked Guillaume, more and more alarmed.

  “Oh, the gunshot! the gunshot!” murmured François.

  “And he said that and no more?” questioned Marianne.

  “Oh yes, wait, do.”

  Never had narrator a more attentive audience.

  Mother Tellier went on, “Then I asked him, ‘And your father? Is there nothing for him? Is there nothing for your mother? ‘“

  “Ah! you did well!” cried the pair, breathing like people who are at last going to learn something.

  “Then he answered, ‘My father and mother, you may tell them that I came by here, and wish them good-bye from me.’”

  “Good-bye?” echoed three voices, simultaneously, but with different intonations. Then Guillaume added alone, “He charged you to bid us good-bye?”

  And turning to his wife with a tone of unutterable reproach, “Oh, wife! wife!” he cried, putting his hand over his eyes.

  “But that is not all,” went on the messenger.

  A unanimous movement brought Guillaume, Marianne and François near her.

  “What did he say besides?” asked Guillaume.

  “He said, ‘Tell them besides to keep Catherine with them, and I shall be grateful to them for all kindness they may show her, if I should happen to die like your poor Antoine.’”

  “To die!” broke in the two old people together, turning pale.

  “‘Tell them,’ “went on Mère Tellier, ‘to make Catherine their heiress.’”

  “Wife! wife! wife!” cried Guillaume, throwing about his arms.

  “Oh, that wretched gunshot,” murmured François.

  Marianne had fallen on to a chair and burst into sobs, for she felt, poor mother, that she was the first cause of all that had befallen, and in addition to the alarm her husband felt, she was a prey to remorse as well.

  At this moment an anguished cry was heard outside.

  “Help! help!” cried a muffled voice.

  Muffled as was the voice all knew it and all four cried in unison, “Catherine!”

  But of them all, Guillaume was first at the door.

  It opened and showed Catherine, pale, with haggard eyes, dishevelled, almost crazy.

  “Murdered!” she cried. “Murdered!”

  “Murdered?” cried the witnesses of these two scenes, during which the horror had gone on increasing.

  “Murdered! murdered!” repeated Catherine, fainting and quivering in Père Guillaume’s arms.

  “Murdered! Who is murdered?”

  “Monsieur Louis Chollet.”

  “The Parisian!” cried François, almost as pale now as Catherine.

  “What? What are you telling us? Come, speak,” urged Guillaume.

  “Murdered! Where, dear Mademoiselle Catherine?” asked François.

  “At the Prince’s spring,” she faltered.

  Guillaume who was supporting her almost let her fall.

  “But who by?” asked Madame Tellier and Madame Watrin in concert. Not having the same reasons as Guillaume and François to fear a terrible disaster, they were still able to ask questions.

  “Who by?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Catherine.

  The two men breathed more freely.

  “But to come to the point,” asked Guillaume, “how did it happen? How came you to be there?”

  “I thought I was going to meet Bernard at the spring.”

  “Meet Bernard?”

  “Yes, Mathieu had made an appointment with me in is name.”

  “Oh, if Mathieu has any hand in the matter,” muttered François, “we are not out of the bush yet.”

  “And so,” went on Guillaume, “you have been to the Prince’s spring?”

  “I thought Bernard was waiting for me there; I thought he wanted to say good-bye to me. It was not true, it was not he at all.”

  “It was not he!” cried Guillaume, clinging to every straw of hope.

  “It was another man.”

  “The Parisian?” cried François.

  “Yes. When he caught sight of me he came towards me, for by this splendid moonlight he could see me across the clearing at more than fifty yards. When we were no more than ten yards from each other I recognized him. Then I understood that I had fallen into a trap. I was going to cry out, to call for help when suddenly a flash came from the direction of the great oak which shelters Madame Tellier’s wine-shop. A gunshot rang out, Monsieur Chollet uttered a cry, put his hand to his breast and fell. Then, as you can understand, I fled like a mad thing; I ran all the way and here I am: but if the house had only been twenty steps farther off I should have fainted, I should have died by the way.”

  “A gunshot!” repeated Guillaume.

  “It is the one that I heard,” murmured François.

  Suddenly a terrible idea which seemed to have left her revived in Catherine’s mind: she looked about her with growing dread, and seeing that he whom she was looking for was not there, “Where is Bernard?” she cried. “Where is he? In the name of Heaven, where is he? Who has seen him?”

  The most mournful silence would have been the only answer to this painful inquiry, had not a yapping voice from the doorway, which had remained half open since Catherine came in, said, “Where is he? poor Monsieur Bernard, where is he? I am going to tell you, I am. He is arrested.”

  “Arrested!” stammered Guillaume heavily.

  “Arrested! Bernard, my child,” cried the mother.

  “Oh, Bernard! Bernard! That is what I feared,” murmured Catherine, letting her head drop on her shoulder as if she was going to faint.

  “What a misfortune! oh, God! oh, God!” exclaimed Mère Tellier, clasping her hands.

  François alone, his eye fixed on the vagabond as if he meant to read him and all that he would say and still more what he would not say, growled between his teeth, “Mathieu! Mathieu!”

  “Arrested!” repeated Guillaume, “how and why?”

  “Lord, I cannot tell you over well,” replied Mathieu, crossing slowly and painfully the parlour from end to end to go and sit in the chimney corner, his usual place. “It appears some one fired at the Parisian. The gendarmes from Villers-Cotterets, who were coming back from the Corey fête, saw Bernard making off, so they ran after him, caught him by the collar, pinioned him and took him away.”

  “But where are they taking him?” asked Guillaume.

  “Oh, I know nothing about that, where they take folks that have committed murder. Only I said this to myself: I love Monsieur Bernard, I love Monsieur Guillaume, I love all the Watrin household, which has been kind to me, has fed me and warmed me. I must tell them the mishap that has befallen poor Monsieur Bernard, because anyhow if there is any way of saving him....”

  “Oh, God! oh, God!” cried the mother, “and to think that it is I, I with my obstinacy, my miserable obstinacy, who have caused all this.”

  As for Father Guillaume, he appeared calmer and stronger, but perhaps none the less he was suffering even more than his wife.

  “And you say, François,” he asked in a low tone, “that you recognized the sound of his gun?”

  “Yes, I told you so; I will answer for that, mind you.”

  “Bernard a murderer!” muttered Guillaume. “Impossible! impossible!”

  “Listen,” said François, as if struck by a sudden inspiration.

  “What?” asked the old Forester.

  “I ask you for three-quarters of an hour.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “To ascertain for you whether Bernard is or is not the murderer of M. Louis Chollet.”

  And without taking either hat or gun François darted out of the house and disappeared at a run in the thick wood.

  Guillaume was so much taken up with what François had just said to him and was trying so eagerly to explain his plan to himself that he barely took notice of two things. The first was that his wife had fainted, and the second that the Abbé Grégoire had come in again.

  It was Catherine who first noticed the worthy priest, whom his black attire prevented from being seen in the dim light. “Oh,” cried she, running to him, “it is you, M. l’Abbé, it is you!”

  “Yes,” he said, “I thought that there were tears to be wiped away here and I came back.”