g him, if he was pointed out to him, but
if not, he could not answer for being able to discover him, himself, and
after reflecting for a long time, he put this simple question:

"Do you know the thief?"

And Lecacheur replied, with a look of Normandy slyness in his eyes:

"As for knowing him, I do not, as I did not see him commit the theft. If
I had seen him, I should have made him eat it raw, skin and flesh,
without a drop of cider to wash it down. But as for saying who it is, I
cannot, although I believe it is that good-for-nothing Polyte."

Then he related at length his troubles with Polyte, his leaving his
service, his bad reputation, things which had been told him, accumulating
insignificant and minute proofs, and then, the brigadier, who had been
listening very attentively while he emptied his glass and filled it again
with an indifferent air, turned to his gendarme and said:

"We must go and look in the cottage of Severin's wife." At which the
gendarme smiled and nodded three times.

Then Madame Lecacheur came to them, and very quietly, with all a
peasant's cunning, questioned the brigadier in her turn. That shepherd
Severin, a simpleton, a sort of brute who had been brought up and had
grown up among his bleating flocks, and who knew scarcely anything
besides them in the world, had nevertheless preserved the peasant's
instinct for saving, at the bottom of his heart. For years and years he
must have hidden in hollow trees and crevices in the rocks all that he
earned, either as a shepherd or by curing animals' sprains--for the
bonesetter's secret had been handed down to him by the old shepherd whose
place he took-by touch or word, and one day he bought a small property,
consisting of a cottage and a field, for three thousand francs.

A few months later it became known that he was going to marry a servant,
notorious for her bad morals, the innkeeper's servant. The young fellows
said that the girl, knowing that he was pretty well off, had been to his
cottage every night, and had taken him, captured him, led him on to
matrimony, little by little night by night.

And then, having been to the mayor's office and to church, she now lived
in the house which her man had bought, while he continued to tend his
flocks, day and night, on the plains.

And the brigadier added:

"Polyte has been sleeping there for three weeks, for the thief has no
place of his own to go to!"

The gendarme made a little joke:

"He tak