red bank-notes of a thousand
francs each.

IX

THE INVISIBLE PRISONER

One day, at about four o'clock, as evening was drawing in, Farmer
Goussot, with his four sons, returned from a day's shooting. They were
stalwart men, all five of them, long of limb, broad-chested, with faces
tanned by sun and wind. And all five displayed, planted on an enormous
neck and shoulders, the same small head with the low forehead, thin
lips, beaked nose and hard and repellent cast of countenance. They were
feared and disliked by all around them. They were a money-grubbing,
crafty family; and their word was not to be trusted.

On reaching the old barbican-wall that surrounds the Heberville
property, the farmer opened a narrow, massive door, putting the big key
back in his pocket after his sons had passed in. And he walked behind
them, along the path that led through the orchards. Here and there stood
great trees, stripped by the autumn winds, and clumps of pines, the last
survivors of the ancient park now covered by old Goussot's farm.

One of the sons said:

"I hope mother has lit a log or two."

"There's smoke coming from the chimney," said the father.

The outhouses and the homestead showed at the end of a lawn; and, above
them, the village church, whose steeple seemed to prick the clouds that
trailed along the sky.

"All the guns unloaded?" asked old Goussot.

"Mine isn't," said the eldest. "I slipped in a bullet to blow a
kestrel's head off...."

He was the one who was proudest of his skill. And he said to his
brothers:

"Look at that bough, at the top of the cherry tree. See me snap it off."

On the bough sat a scarecrow, which had been there since spring and
which protected the leafless branches with its idiot arms.

He raised his gun and fired.

The figure came tumbling down with large, comic gestures, and was caught
on a big, lower branch, where it remained lying stiff on its stomach,
with a great top hat on its head of rags and its hay-stuffed legs
swaying from right to left above some water that flowed past the cherry
tree through a wooden trough.

They all laughed. The father approved:

"A fine shot, my lad. Besides, the old boy was beginning to annoy me. I
couldn't take my eyes from my plate at meals without catching sight of
that oaf...."

They went a few steps farther. They were not more than thirty yards from
the house, when the father stopped suddenly and said:

"Hullo! What's up?"

The so