t.

* * * * *

The evening before, Mme. Acquet de Ferolles, returning to Falaise with
Lefebre, had gone to bed more sick with fatigue than drink; however, she
had returned to Donnay at dawn in the fear that her absence might awaken
suspicion. This Sunday, the 7th June, was indeed the Fete-Dieu, and she
must decorate the wayside altars as she did each year.

Lanoe, who had arrived the evening before from his farm at Glatigny,
worked all the morning hanging up draperies, and covering the walls with
green branches. Mme. Acquet directed the arrangements for the procession
with feverish excitement, filling baskets with rose leaves, grouping
children, placing garlands. Doubtless her thoughts flew from this
flowery fete to the wood yonder, where at this minute the men whom she
had incited waited under the trees, gun in hand. Perhaps she felt a
perverse pleasure in the contrast between the hymns sung among the
hedges and the criminal anxiety that wrung her. Did she not confess
later that in the confusion of her mind she had not feared to call on
God for the success of "her enterprise"?

When, about five o'clock, the procession was at an end, Mme. Acquet went
through the rose-strewn streets to find her confidante, Rosalie Dupont.
Such was her impatience that she soon left this girl, irresistibly drawn
to the road where her own fate and that of her lover were being
decided. Lanoe, who was returning to Glatigny in the evening, was
surprised to meet the chatelaine of La Bijude in a little wood near
Clair-Tizon. She was scarcely a league from the place where the men were
hidden. From her secluded spot she could, with beating heart, motionless
and mute with anguish, hear the noise of shooting, which rung out clear
in the silence of the summer evening. It was exactly a quarter to eight.

* * * * *

The waggon had, indeed, left Potigny at seven o'clock. A little way from
the village, the road, which had been quite straight for six leagues,
descended a low hill at the foot of which is the wood of Quesnay, a low
thicket of hazel, topped by a few oaks. Allain had posted his men along
the road under the branches; on the edge of the wood towards Falaise
stood Flierle, Le Hericey, and Fleur d'Epine. Allain himself was with
Harel and Coeur-le-Roi, at the end nearest Langannerie. Grand-Charles
and Le Lorault were placed in the middle of the wood at equal distances
from these t