ontinued: "Ah! So you will
not tell me. Then I will tell you; it is Jean Baudu?"--"No, not he,"
she exclaimed. "Then it is Pierre Martin?"--"Oh! no, master."

And he angrily mentioned all the young fellows in the neighborhood, while
she denied that he had hit upon the right one, and every moment wiped her
eyes with the corner of her blue apron. But he still tried to find it
out, with his brutish obstinacy, and, as it were, scratching at her heart
to discover her secret, just as a terrier scratches at a hole to try and
get at the animal which he scents inside it. Suddenly, however, the man
shouted: "By George! It is Jacques, the man who was here last year. They
used to say that you were always talking together, and that you thought
about getting married."

Rose was choking, and she grew scarlet, while her tears suddenly stopped
and dried up on her cheeks, like drops of water on hot iron, and she
exclaimed: "No, it is not he, it is not he!" "Is that really a fact?"
asked the cunning peasant, who partly guessed the truth; and she replied,
hastily: "I will swear it; I will swear it to you--" She tried to
think of something by which to swear, as she did not venture to invoke
sacred things, but he interrupted her: "At any rate, he used to follow
you into every corner and devoured you with his eyes at meal times. Did
you ever give him your promise, eh?"

This time she looked her master straight in the face. "No, never, never;
I will solemnly swear to you that if he were to come to-day and ask me to
marry him I would have nothing to do with him." She spoke with such an
air of sincerity that the farmer hesitated, and then he continued, as if
speaking to himself: "What, then? You have not had a misfortune, as they
call it, or it would have been known, and as it has no consequences, no
girl would refuse her master on that account. There must be something at
the bottom of it, however."

She could say nothing; she had not the strength to speak, and he asked
her again: "You will not?" "I cannot, master," she said, with a sigh, and
he turned on his heel.

She thought she had got rid of him altogether and spent the rest of the
day almost tranquilly, but was as exhausted as if she had been turning
the thrashing machine all day in the place of the old white horse, and
she went to bed as soon as she could and fell asleep immediately. In the
middle of the night, however, two hands touching the bed woke her. She
trembled with fear, but