floating, ceaseless murmur gentle and sad, of this rainfall seemed like
a low wail, and those leaves continually falling, seemed like tears,
big tears shed by the tall mournful trees which were weeping, as it
were, day and night over the close of the year, over the ending of warm
dawns and soft twilights, over the ending of hot breezes and bright
suns, and also perhaps over the crime which they had seen committed
under the shade of their branches, over the girl violated and killed at
their feet. They wept in the silence of the desolate empty wood, the
abandoned, dreaded wood, where the soul, the childish soul of the dead
little girl must be wandering all alone.

The Brindelle, swollen by the storms, rushed on more quickly, yellow and
angry, between its dry banks, between two thin, bare willow-hedges.

And here was Renardet suddenly resuming his walks under the trees. Every
day, at sunset, he came out of his house decended the front steps
slowly, and entered the wood, in a dreamy fashion with his hands in his
pockets. For a long time he paced over the damp soft moss, while a
legion of rooks, rushing to the spot from all the neighboring haunts in
order to rest in the tall summits, unrolled themselves through space,
like an immense mourning veil floating in the wind, uttering violent and
sinister screams. Sometimes, they rested, dotting with black spots the
tangled branches against the red sky, the sky crimsoned with autumn
twilights. Then, all of a sudden, they set again, croaking frightfully
and trailing once more above the wood the long dark festoon of their
flight.

They swooped down at last, on the highest treetops, and gradually their
cawings died away while the advancing night mingled their black plumes
with the blackness of space.

Renardet was still strolling slowly under the trees; then, when the
thick darkness prevented him from walking any longer, he went back to
the house, sank all of a heap into his armchair in front of the glowing
hearth, stretching towards the fire his damp feet from which for some
time under the flames vapor emanated.

Now, one morning, an important bit of news was circulated around the
district; the Mayor was getting his wood cut down.

Twenty woodcutters were already at work. They had commenced at the
corner nearest to the house, and they worked rapidly in the master's
presence.

At first, the loppers climbed up the trunk. Tied to it by a rope collar,
they cling round in the begi