d
two gendarmes sent from Soulanges with their sergeant--searched the
country. It was not till the middle of the morning that they found the
body of the bailiff in a copse between the mail-road and the smaller
road leading to Ville-aux-Fayes, at the end of the park of Les Aigues,
not far from Conches. Two gendarmes started, one to Ville-aux-Fayes for
the prosecuting attorney, the other to Soulanges for the justice of the
peace. Meantime the general, assisted by the sergeant, noted down the
facts. They found on the road, just above the two pavilions, the print
of the stamping of the horse's feet as he roared, and the traces of his
frightened gallop from there to the first opening in the woods above the
hedge. The horse, no longer guided, turned into the wood-path. Michaud's
hat was found there. The animal evidently took the nearest way to reach
his stable. The bailiff had a ball though his back which broke the
spine.

Groison and the sergeant studied the ground around the spot where the
horse reared (which might be called, in judicial language, the theatre
of the crime) with remarkable sagacity, but without obtaining any clue.
The earth was too frozen to show the footprints of the murderer, and all
they found was the paper of a cartridge. When the attorney and the judge
and Monsieur Gourdon, the doctor, arrived and raised the body to make
the autopsy, it was found that the ball, which corresponded with the
fragments of the wad, was an ammunition ball, evidently from a military
musket; and no such musket existed in the district of Blangy. The judge
and Monsieur Soudry the attorney, who came that evening to the chateau,
thought it best to collect all the facts and await events. The same
opinion was expressed by the sergeant and the lieutenant of the
gendarmerie.

"It is impossible that it can be anything but a planned attack on the
part of the peasants," said the sergeant; "but there are two districts,
Conches and Blangy, in each of which there are five or six persons
capable of being concerned in the murder. The one that I suspect most,
Tonsard, passed the night carousing in the Grand-I-Vert; but your
assistant, general, the miller Langlume, was there, and he says that
Tonsard did not leave the tavern. They were all so drunk they could not
stand; they took the bride home at half-past one; and the return of
the horse proves that Michaud was murdered between eleven o'clock and
midnight. At a quarter past ten Groison saw t