ed yet another thing."

"What was it, Dagobert?"

"You know that the road which led to our house way, always damp, because
of the overflowing of the little spring."

"Yes."

"Well, then, the mark of the traveller's footsteps remained in the clay,
and I saw that he had nails under his shoe in the form of a cross."

"How in the form of a cross?"

"Look!" said Dagobert, placing the tip of his finger seven times on the
coverlet of the bed; "they were arrange: thus beneath his heel:"

*
* * *
*
*
*

"You see it forms a cross."

"What could it mean, Dagobert?"

"Chance, perhaps--yes, chance--and yet, in spite of myself, this
confounded cross left behind him struck me as a bad omen, for hardly was
he gone when misfortune after misfortune fell upon us."

"Alas! the death of our mother!"

"Yes--but, before that, another piece of ill-luck. You had not yet
returned, and she was writing her petition to ask leave to go to France
or to send you there, when I heard the gallop of a horse. It was a
courier from the governor general of Siberia. He brought us orders to
change our residence; within three days we were to join other condemned
persons, and be removed with them four hundred leagues further north.
Thus, after fifteen years of exile, they redoubled in cruelty towards
your mother."

"Why did they thus torment her?"

"One would think that some evil genius was at work against her. A few
days later, the traveller would no longer have found us at Milosk; and if
he had joined us further on, it would have been too far for the medal and
papers to be of use--since, having set out almost immediately, we shall
hardly arrive in time at Paris. 'If they had some interest to prevent me
and my children from going to France,' said your mother, 'they would act
just as they have done. To banish us four hundred leagues further, is to
render impossible this journey, of which the term is fixed.' And the idea
overwhelmed her with grief."

"Perhaps it was this unexpected sorrow that was the cause of her sudden
illness."

"Alas! no, my children; it was that infernal cholera, who arrives without
giving you notice--for he too is a great traveller--and strikes you down
like a thunderbolt. Three hours after the traveller had left us, when you
returned quite pleased and gay from the forest, with your large bunches
of wild-flowers for your mother, she was already in the last agony, and
h