l see how things go at the harvest and the vintage," said
Tonsard.

"They can't stop the gleaning," said the old woman.

"I don't know that," remarked Madame Tonsard. "Groison said that the
mayor was going to publish a notice that no one should glean without a
certificate of pauperism; and who's to give that certificate? Himself,
of course. He won't give many, I tell you! And they say he is going to
issue an order that no one shall enter the fields till the carts are all
loaded."

"Why, the fellow's a pestilence!" cried Tonsard, beside himself with
rage.

"I heard that only yesterday," said Madame Tonsard. "I offered Groison a
glass of brandy to get something out of him."

"Groison! there's another lucky fellow!" said Vaudoyer, "they've built
him a house and given him a good wife, and he's got an income and
clothes fit for a king. There was I, field-keeper for twenty years, and
all I got was the rheumatism."

"Yes, he's very lucky," said Godain, "he owns property--"

"And we go without, like the fools that we are," said Vaudoyer. "Come,
let's be off and find out what's going on at Conches; they are not so
patient over there as we are."

"Come on," said Laroche, who was none too steady on his legs. "If I
don't exterminate one of two of those fellows may I lose my name."

"You!" said Tonsard, "you'd let them put the whole district in prison;
but I--if they dare to touch my old mother, there's my gun and it never
misses."

"Well," said Laroche to Vaudoyer, "I tell you that if they make a single
prisoner at Conches one gendarme shall fall."

"He has said it, old Laroche!" cried Courtecuisse.

"He has said it," remarked Vaudoyer, "but he hasn't done it, and he
won't do it. What good would it do to get yourself guillotined for some
gendarme or other? No, if you kill, I say, kill Michaud."

During this scene Catherine Tonsard stood sentinel at the door to
warn the drinkers to keep silent if any one passed. In spite of their
half-drunken legs they sprang rather than walked out of the tavern,
and their bellicose temper started them at a good pace on the road to
Conches, which led for over a mile along the park wall of Les Aigues.

Conches was a true Burgundian village, with one street, which was
crossed by the main road. The houses were built either of brick or of
cobblestones, and were squalid in aspect. Following the mail-road
from Ville-aux-Fayes, the village was seen from the rear and there
it presented rat