e ceased speaking, his eyes filling with tears.

"Good God! my dear boy, you can't form any idea of the emotion that
filled me when I heard this poor devil, whose wife I had killed without
suspecting it, telling me this story on that wet night in this very
kitchen.

"I exclaimed: 'Ah! my poor Jean! my poor Jean!'

"He murmured: 'Well, that's all, M'sieu le Baron. I could not help it,
one way or the other--and now it's all over!'

"I caught his hand across the table, and I began to weep.

"He asked, 'Will you come and see her grave?' I nodded assent, for I
couldn't speak. He rose, lighted a lantern, and we walked through the
blinding rain by the light of the lantern.

"He opened a gate, and I saw some crosses of black wood.

"Suddenly he stopped before a marble slab and said: 'There it is,' and he
flashed the lantern close to it so that I could read the inscription:

"'TO LOUISE HORTENSE MARINET,
"'Wife of Jean-Francois Lebrument, Farmer,
"'SHE WAS A FAITHFUL WIFE. GOD REST HER SOUL.'

"We fell on our knees in the damp grass, he and I, with the lantern
between us, and I saw the rain beating on the white marble slab. And I
thought of the heart of her sleeping there in her grave. Ah! poor heart!
poor heart! Since then I come here every year. And I don't know why, but
I feel as if I were guilty of some crime in the presence of this man who
always looks as if he forgave me."

THE DEVIL

The peasant and the doctor stood on opposite sides of the bed, beside the
old, dying woman. She was calm and resigned and her mind quite clear as
she looked at them and listened to their conversation. She was going to
die, and she did not rebel at it, for her time was come, as she was
ninety-two.

The July sun streamed in at the window and the open door and cast its hot
flames on the uneven brown clay floor, which had been stamped down by
four generations of clodhoppers. The smell of the fields came in also,
driven by the sharp wind and parched by the noontide heat. The
grass-hoppers chirped themselves hoarse, and filled the country with
their shrill noise, which was like that of the wooden toys which are sold
to children at fair time.

The doctor raised his voice and said: "Honore, you cannot leave your
mother in this state; she may die at any moment." And the peasant, in
great distress, replied: "But I must get in my wheat, for it has been
lying on the ground a long time, and the weather is jus