e! Do hold your tongue! Keep quiet!" he
continued.

She kept shrieking as she tried to free herself. He suddenly realized
that he was ruined, and he caught her by the neck to stop her mouth from
uttering these heartrending, dreadful screams. As she continued to
struggle with the desperate strength of a being who is seeking to fly
from death, he pressed his enormous hands on the little throat swollen
with screaming, and in a few seconds he had strangled her, so furiously
did he grip her. He had not intended to kill her, but only to make her
keep quiet.

Then he stood up, overwhelmed with horror.

She lay before him, her face bleeding and blackned. He was about to rush
away when there sprang up in his agitated soul the mysterious and
undefined instinct that guides all beings in the hour of danger.

He was going to throw the body into the water, but another impulse drove
him toward the clothes, which he made into a small package. Then, as he
had a piece of twine in his pocket, he tied it up and hid it in a deep
portion of the stream, beneath the trunk of a tree that overhung the
Brindille.

Then he went off at a rapid pace, reached the meadows, took a wide turn
in order to show himself to some peasants who dwelt some distance away at
the opposite side of the district, and came back to dine at the usual
hour, telling his servants all that was supposed to have happened during
his walk.

He slept, however, that night; he slept with a heavy, brutish sleep like
the sleep of certain persons condemned to death. He did not open his eyes
until the first glimmer of dawn, and he waited till his usual hour for
riding, so as to excite no suspicion.

Then he had to be present at the inquiry as to the cause of death. He did
so like a somnambulist, in a kind of vision which showed him men and
things as in a dream, in a cloud of intoxication, with that sense of
unreality which perplexes the mind at the time of the greatest
catastrophes.

But the agonized cry of Mother Roque pierced his heart. At that moment he
had felt inclined to cast himself at the old woman's feet and to exclaim:

"I am the guilty one!"

But he had restrained himself. He went back, however, during the night to
fish up the dead girl's wooden shoes, in order to place them on her
mother's threshold.

As long as the inquiry lasted, as long as it was necessary to lead
justice astray he was calm, master of himself, crafty and smiling. He
discussed quietly with