or the legal examination."
And, turning to his deputy, he said:

"I can make use of your trap, can I not?"

"Yes, certainly."

They all came back to the place where the corpse lay. Mother La Roque,
now seated beside her daughter, was holding her hand and was staring
right before her with a wandering, listless eye.

The two doctors endeavored to lead her away, so that she might not
witness the dead girl's removal, but she understood at once what they
wanted to do, and, flinging herself on the body, she threw both arms
round it. Lying on top of the corpse, she exclaimed:

"You shall not have it--it's mine--it's mine now. They have killed her
for me, and I want to keep her--you shall not have her----"

All the men, affected and not knowing how to act, remained standing
around her. Renardet fell on his knees and said to her:

"Listen, La Roque, it is necessary, in order to find out who killed her.
Without this, we could not find out. We must make a search for the man
in order to punish him. When we have found him we'll give her up to you.
I promise you this."

This explanation bewildered the woman, and a feeling of hatred
manifested itself in her distracted glance.

"So then they'll arrest him?"

"Yes, I promise you that."

She rose up, deciding to let them do as they liked, but when the captain
remarked:

"It is surprising that her clothes were not found," a new idea, which
she had not previously thought of, abruptly entered her mind, and she
asked:

"Where are her clothes? They're mine. I want them. Where have they been
put?"

They explained to her that they had not been found. Then she demanded
them persistently, crying and moaning.

"They're mine--I want them. Where are they? I want them!"

The more they tried to calm her the more she sobbed and persisted in
her demands. She no longer wanted the body, she insisted on having the
clothes, as much perhaps through the unconscious cupidity of a wretched
being to whom a piece of silver represents a fortune as through maternal
tenderness.

And when the little body, rolled up in blankets which had been brought
out from Renardet's house, had disappeared in the vehicle, the old
woman standing under the trees, sustained by the mayor and the captain,
exclaimed:

"I have nothing, nothing, nothing in the world, not even her little cap
--her little cap."

The cure, a young priest, had just arrived. He took it on himself to
accompany the mother, and they went