m their portion.

By this time night had fallen, a pleasant night with a clear sky
thick-set with stars, and Maurice and Jean, who had regained the shelter
of their little wood, presently perceived Lapoulle wandering up and down
the river bank. The two others had vanished, had doubtless returned to
the encampment by the canal, their mind troubled by reason of the corpse
they left behind them. He, on the other hand, seemed to dread going to
rejoin the comrades. When he was more himself and his brutish, sluggish
intellect showed him the full extent of his crime, he had evidently
experienced a twinge of anguish that made motion a necessity, and not
daring to return to the interior of the peninsula, where he would have
to face the body of his victim, had sought the bank of the stream, where
he was now tramping to and fro with uneven, faltering steps. What was
going on within the recesses of that darkened mind that guided the
actions of that creature, so degraded as to be scarce higher than the
animal? Was it the awakening of remorse? or only the fear lest his crime
might be discovered? He could not remain there; he paced his beat as
a wild beast shambles up and down its cage, with a sudden and
ever-increasing longing to fly, a longing that ached and pained like a
physical hurt, from which he felt he should die, could he do nothing
to satisfy it. Quick, quick, he must fly, must fly at once, from that
prison where he had slain a fellow-being. And yet, the coward in him, it
may be, gaining the supremacy, he threw himself on the ground, and for a
long time lay crouched among the herbage.

And Maurice said to Jean in his horror and disgust:

"See here, I cannot remain longer in this place; I tell you plainly I
should go mad. I am surprised that the physical part of me holds out as
it does; my bodily health is not so bad, but the mind is going; yes! it
is going, I am certain of it. If you leave me another day in this hell I
am lost. I beg you, let us go away, let us start at once!"

And he went on to propound the wildest schemes for getting away. They
would swim the Meuse, would cast themselves on the sentries and strangle
them with a cord he had in his pocket, or would beat out their brains
with rocks, or would buy them over with the money they had left and don
their uniform to pass through the Prussian lines.

"My dear boy, be silent!" Jean sadly answered; "it frightens me to hear
you talk so wildly. Is there any reason in