s I would a
dog's."

The peasants were greatly afraid of him. They held back. Dr. Labarbe,
who was smoking, sat down beside La Roque, and spoke to her in order to
distract her attention. The old woman soon removed her hands from her
face, and she replied with a flood of tearful words, emptying her grief
in copious talk. She told the whole story of her life, her marriage, the
death of her man, a bullsticker, who had been gored to death, the
infancy of her daughter, her wretched existence as a widow without
resources and with a child to support. She had only this one, her little
Louise, and the child had been killed--killed in this wood. All of a
sudden, she felt anxious to see it again, and dragging herself on her
knees towards the corpse, she raised up one corner of the garment that
covered her; then she let it fall again, and began wailing once more.
The crowd remained silent, eagerly watching all the mother's gestures.

But all of a sudden, a great swaying movement took place, and there was
a cry of "the gendarmes! the gendarmes!"

The gendarmes appeared in the distance, coming on at a rapid trot,
escorting their captain and a little gentleman with red whiskers, who
was bobbing up and down like a monkey on a big white mare.

The steward had just found M. Putoin, the examining magistrate, at the
moment when he was mounting his horse to take his daily ride, for he
posed as a good horseman to the great amusement of the officers.

He alighted along with the captain, and passed the hands of the Mayor
and the Doctor, casting a ferret-like glance on the linen vest which
swelled above the body lying underneath.

When he was thoroughly acquainted with the facts, he first gave orders
to get rid of the public, whom the gendarmes drove out of the wood, but
who soon reappeared in the meadow, and formed a hedge, a big hedge of
excited and moving heads all along the Brindelle, on the other side of
the stream.

The doctor in his turn, gave explanations, of which Renardet took a note
in his memorandum book. All the evidence was given, taken down, and
commented on without leading to any discovery. Maxime, too, came back
without having found any trace of the clothes.

This disappearance surprised everybody; no one could explain it on the
theory of theft, and as these rags were not worth twenty sous, even this
theory was inadmissible.

The examining magistrate, the mayor, the captain, and the doctor, set to
work by searching i