with blood. He picked it up. The linen was fine, and the
postman in alarm, made his way over to the dike, where he fancied he
saw a strange object.

Mademoiselle Source was lying at the bottom on the grass, her throat
cut open with a knife.

An hour later, the gendarmes, the examining magistrate, and other
authorities made an inquiry as to the cause of death.

The two female relatives, called as witnesses, told all about the old
maid's fears and her last plans.

The orphan was arrested. Since the death of the woman who had adopted
him, he wept from morning till night, plunged at least to all
appearance, in the most violent grief.

He proved that he had spent the evening up to eleven o'clock in a
cafe. Ten persons had seen him, having remained there till his
departure.

Now the driver of the diligence stated that he had set down the
murdered woman on the road between half-past nine and ten o'clock.

The accused was acquitted. A will, a long time made, which had been
left in the hands of a notary in Rennes, made him universal legatee.
So he inherited everything.

For a long time, the people of the country put him into a quarantine,
as they still suspected him. His house, which was that of the dead
woman, was looked upon as accursed. People avoided him in the street.

But he showed himself so good-natured, so open, so familiar, that
gradually these horrible doubts were forgotten. He was generous,
obliging, ready to talk to the humblest about anything as long as they
cared to talk to him.

The notary, Maitre Rameay, was one of the first to take his part,
attracted by his smiling loquacity. He said one evening at a dinner at
the tax-collector's house:

"A man who speaks with such facility and who is always in good humor
could not have such a crime on his conscience."

Touched by his argument, the others who were present reflected, and
they recalled to mind the long conversations with this man who made
them stop almost by force at the road corners to communicate his ideas
to them, who insisted on their going into his house when they were
passing by his garden, who could crack a joke better than the
lieutenant of the gendarmes himself, and who possessed such contagious
gayety that, in spite of the repugnance with which he inspired them,
they could not keep from always laughing in his company.

All doors were opened to him, after a time.

He is, to-day, the mayor of his own township.

THE BLIND MAN