d purpose of killing a man, and we load our gun
with small-shot! Really, you make the defence too easy; for your charges
do not stand being examined."

It was Jacques's turn, this time, to testify his approbation.

"That is," he said, "what I have told Galpin over and over again; and he
never had anything to say in reply. We must insist on that point."

M. Folgat was consulting his notes.

"I now come to a very important circumstance, and one which I should,
at the trial, make a decisive question, if it should be favorable to our
side. Your valet, my dear client,--your old Anthony,--told me that he
had cleaned and washed your breech-loader the night before the crime."

"Great God!" exclaimed Jacques.

"Well, I see you appreciate the importance of the fact. Between that
cleaning and the time when you set a cartridge on fire, in order to burn
the letters of the Countess Claudieuse, did you fire your gun? If you
did, we must say nothing more about it. If you did not, one of the
barrels of the breech-loader must be clean, and then you are safe."

For more than a minute, Jacques remained silent, trying to recall the
facts; at last he replied,--

"It seems to me, I am sure, I fired at a rabbit on the morning of the
fatal day."

M. Magloire looked disappointed.

"Fate again!" he said.

"Oh, wait!" cried Jacques. "I am quite sure, at all events, that I
killed that rabbit at the first shot. Consequently, I can have fouled
only one barrel of the gun. If I have used the same barrel at Valpinson,
to get a light, I am safe. With a double gun, one almost instinctively
first uses the right-hand barrel."

M. Magloire's face grew darker.

"Never mind," he said, "we cannot possibly make an argument upon such
an uncertain chance,--a chance which, in case of error, would almost
fatally turn against us. But at the trial, when they show you the gun,
examine it, so that you can tell me how that matter stands."

Thus they had sketched the outlines of their plan of defence. There
remained nothing now but to perfect the details; and to this task the
two lawyers were devoting themselves still, when Blangin, the jailer,
called to them through the wicket, that the doors of the prison were
about to be closed.

"Five minutes more, my good Blangin!" cried Jacques.

And drawing his two friends aside, as far from the wicket as he could,
he said to them in a low and distressed voice,--

"A thought has occurred to me, gentlemen, which