keeper, Margot Patry, had gone to bed.
Here was the solution to the problem, the satisfaction of modesty and
propriety.

She crossed the street quickly, hurried round the corner of the house,
and was passing the side-window of the shop, when a crack in the
shutters caught her eye. She heard something fall on the floor within.
Could it be that the tailor and M'sieu' were working at so late an hour?
She had an irresistible impulse, and glued her eye to the crack.

But presently she started back with a smothered cry. There by the great
fireplace stood Louis Trudel picking up a red-hot cross with a pair of
pincers. Grasping the iron firmly just below the arms of the cross, the
tailor held it up again. He looked at it with a wild triumph, yet with a
malignancy little in keeping with the object he held--the holy relic he
had stolen from the door of the parish church. The girl gave a low cry
of dismay.

She saw old Louis advance stealthily towards the door of the shop
leading into the house. In bewilderment, she stood still an instant,
then, with a sudden impulse, she ran to the kitchen-door and tried it
softly. It was not locked. She opened it, entered quickly, and found old
Margot standing in the middle of the room in her night-dress.

"Oh, Rosalie, Rosalie!" cried the old woman, "something's going to
happen. M'sieu' Trudel has been queer all evening. I peeped in the
key-hole of the shop just now, and--"

"Yes, yes, I've seen too. Come!" said Rosalie, and going quickly to the
door, opened it, and passed through to another room. Here she opened
another door, leading into the hall between the shop and the house.
Entering the hall, she saw a glimmer of light above. It was the reddish
glow of the iron cross held by old Louis. She crept softly up the stone
steps. She heard a door open very quietly. She hurried now, and came to
the landing. She saw the door of Charley's room open--all the village
knew what room he slept in--and the moonlight was streaming in at the
window.

She saw the sleeping man on the bed, and the tailor standing over him.
Charley was lying with one arm thrown above his head; the other lay over
the side of the bed.

As she rushed forward, divining old Louis' purpose, the fiery
cross descended, and a voice cried: "'Show me a sign from Heaven,
tailor-man!'"

This voice was drowned by that of another, which, gasping with agony
out of a deep sleep, as the body sprang upright, cried: "God-oh God!"
Rosali