Maurice doubted no longer; there was no room for mistake now; the Alsatian was certainly the man whom he had seen arrested at the camp of Mulhausen and released because there was not evidence enough to hold him, and that man was Goliah, old Fouchard’s quondam assistant on his farm at Remilly.  When finally the peasant opened his door the house was searched from top to bottom, but to no purpose; the bird had flown, the gawky Alsatian, the tow-headed, simple-faced lout whom General Bourgain-Desfeuilles had questioned the day before at dinner without learning anything and before whom, in the innocence of his heart, he had disclosed things that would have better been kept secret.  It was evident enough that the scamp had made his escape by a back window which was found open, but the hunt that was immediately started throughout the village and its environs had no results; the fellow, big as he was, had vanished as utterly as a smoke-wreath dissolves upon the air.

Maurice thought it best to take Honore away, lest in his distracted state he might reveal to the spectators unpleasant family secrets which they had no concern to know.

“Tonnerre de Dieu!” he cried again, “it would have done me such good to strangle him!—­The letter that I was speaking of revived all my old hatred for him.”

And the two of them sat down upon the ground against a stack of rye a little way from the house, and he handed the letter to his cousin.

It was the old story:  the course of Honore Fouchard’s and Silvine Morange’s love had not run smooth.  She, a pretty, meek-eyed, brown-haired girl, had in early childhood lost her mother, an operative in one of the factories of Raucourt, and Doctor Dalichamp, her godfather, a worthy man who was greatly addicted to adopting the wretched little beings whom he ushered into the world, had conceived the idea of placing her in Father Fouchard’s family as small maid of all work.  True it was that the old boor was a terrible skinflint and a harsh, stern taskmaster; he had gone into the butchering business from sordid love of lucre, and his cart was to be seen daily, rain or shine, on the roads of twenty communes; but if the child was willing to work she would have a home and a protector, perhaps some small prospect in the future.  At all events she would be spared the contamination of the factory.  And naturally enough it came to pass that in old Fouchard’s household the son and heir and the little maid of all work fell in love with each other.  Honore was then just turned sixteen and she was twelve, and when she was sixteen and he twenty there was a drawing for the army; Honore, to his great delight, secured a lucky number and determined to marry.  Nothing had ever passed between them, thanks to the unusual delicacy that was inherent in the lad’s tranquil, thoughtful nature, more than an occasional hug and a furtive kiss in the barn.  But when he spoke of the marriage to his father, the old man, who had the stubbornness