med the stranger, in a surprised tone. "What has he
done to you?"

"Yes, brigand! you may tell him so from me. But, by the way," continued
the workman, surveying his companion from head to foot with a searching,
defiant air, "do you happen to be the carpenter who is coming from
Strasbourg? In that case, I have a few words to say to you. Lambernier
does not allow any one to take the bread out of his mouth in that way;
do you understand?"

The young man seemed very little moved by this declaration.

"I am not a carpenter," said he, smiling, "and I have no wish for your
work."

"Truly, you do not look as if you had pushed a plane very often. It
seems that in your business one does not spoil one's hands. You are a
workman about as much as I am pope."

This remark made the one to whom it was addressed feel in as bad a humor
as an author does when he finds a grammatical error in one of his books.

"So you work at the chateau, then," said he, finally, to change the
conversation.

"For six months I have worked in that shanty," replied the workman; "I
am the one who carved the new woodwork, and I will say it is well done.
Well, this great wild boar of a Bergenheim turned me out of the house
yesterday as if I had been one of his dogs."

"He doubtless had his reasons."

"I tell you, I will crush him--reasons! Damn it! They told him I talked
too often with his wife's maid and quarrelled with the servants, a pack
of idlers! Did he not forbid my putting my foot upon his land? I am upon
his land now; let him come and chase me off; let him come, he will see
how I shall receive him. Do you see this stick? I have just cut it in
his own woods to use it on himself!"

The young man no longer listened to the workman; his eyes were turned
toward the castle, whose slightest details he studied, as if he hoped
that in the end the stone would turn into glass and let him see the
interior. If this curiosity had any other object than the architecture
and form of the building it was not gratified. No human figure came to
enliven this sad, lonely dwelling. All the windows were closed, as if
the house were uninhabited. The baying of dogs, probably imprisoned
in their kennel, was the only sound which came to break the strange
silence, and the distant thunder, with its dull rumbling, repeated by
the echoes, responded plaintively, and gave a lugubrious character to
the scene.

"When one speaks of the devil he appears," said the workman, sudd