nion of having
perpetrated such a crime."

"Continue," said M. Putoin.

Renardet, while proceeding with his toilet, reviewed the characters of
all the inhabitants of Carvelin. After two hours' discussion their
suspicions were fixed on three individuals who had hitherto borne a shady
reputation--a poacher named Cavalle, a fisherman named Paquet, who
caught trout and crabs, and a cattle drover named Clovis.
II

The search for the perpetrator of the crime lasted all summer, but he was
not discovered. Those who were suspected and arrested easily proved their
innocence, and the authorities were compelled to abandon the attempt to
capture the criminal.

But this murder seemed to have moved the entire country in a singular
manner. There remained in every one's mind a disquietude, a vague fear, a
sensation of mysterious terror, springing not merely from the
impossibility of discovering any trace of the assassin, but also and
above all from that strange finding of the wooden shoes in front of La
Roque's door the day after the crime. The certainty that the murderer had
assisted at the investigation, that he was still, doubtless, living in
the village, possessed all minds and seemed to brood over the
neighborhood like a constant menace.

The wood had also become a dreaded spot, a place to be avoided and
supposed to be haunted.

Formerly the inhabitants went there to spend every Sunday afternoon. They
used to sit down on the moss at the feet of the huge tall trees or walk
along the water's edge watching the trout gliding among the weeds. The
boy's used to play bowls, hide-and-seek and other games where the ground
had been cleared and levelled, and the girls, in rows of four or five,
would trip along, holding one another by the arms and screaming songs
with their shrill voices. Now nobody ventured there for fear of finding
some corpse lying on the ground.

Autumn arrived, the leaves began to fall from the tall trees, whirling
round and round to the ground, and the sky could be seen through the bare
branches. Sometimes, when a gust of wind swept over the tree tops, the
slow, continuous rain suddenly grew heavier and became a rough storm that
covered the moss with a thick yellow carpet that made a kind of creaking
sound beneath one's feet.

And the sound of the falling leaves seemed like a wail and the leaves
themselves like tears shed by these great, sorrowful trees, that wept in
the silence of the bare and empty wood, thi