t not for me."

He cast a look upon the different woods piled up around the shop,--a
look of painful meaning.

"I understand you, Brigaut," said his worthy master. "Take all you
want." And he showed him the oaken planks of two-inch thickness.

"Don't help me, Monsieur Frappier," said the Breton, "I wish to do it
alone."

He passed the night in planing and fitting Pierrette's coffin, and more
than once his plane took off at a single pass a ribbon of wood which was
wet with tears. The good man Frappier smoked his pipe and watched him
silently, saying only, when the four pieces were joined together,--

"Make the cover to slide; her poor grandmother will not hear the nails."

At daybreak Brigaut went out to fetch the lead to line the coffin. By
a strange chance, the sheets of lead cost just the sum he had given
Pierrette for her journey from Nantes to Provins. The brave Breton, who
was able to resist the awful pain of himself making the coffin of his
dear one and lining with his memories those burial planks, could not
bear up against this strange reminder. His strength gave way; he was not
able to lift the lead, and the plumber, seeing this, came with him, and
offered to accompany him to the house and solder the last sheet when the
body had been laid in the coffin.

The Breton burned the plane and all the tools he had used. Then he
settled his accounts with Frappier and bade him farewell. The heroism
with which the poor lad personally performed, like the grandmother, the
last offices for Pierrette made him a sharer in the awful scene which
crowned the tyranny of the Rogrons.

Brigaut and the plumber reached the house of Monsieur Auffray just in
time to decide by their own main force an infamous and shocking judicial
question. The room where the dead girl lay was full of people, and
presented to the eyes of the two men a singular sight. The Rogron
emissaries were standing beside the body of their victim, to torture her
even after death. The corpse of the child, solemn in its beauty, lay on
the cot-bed of her grandmother. Pierrette's eyes were closed, the brown
hair smoothed upon her brow, the body swathed in a coarse cotton sheet.

Before the bed, on her knees, her hair in disorder, her hands stretched
out, her face on fire, the old Lorrain was crying out, "No, no, it shall
not be done!"

At the foot of the bed stood Monsieur Auffray and the two priests. The
tapers were still burning.

Opposite to the grandmothe