n dreaming, you think? I should be
tempted to believe it, for I have been exhausting myself in inquiries
and suppositions ever since this morning. However, it is easy enough to
question them."

The two cousins were sent for to the big drawing room. Suzanne, still
quite pale and trembling, could hardly speak. Raymonde, who was more
energetic, more of a man, better looking, too, with the golden glint in
her brown eyes, described the events of the night and the part which
she had played in them.

"So I may take it, mademoiselle, that your evidence is positive?"

"Absolutely. The men who went across the park were carrying things away
with them."

"And the third man?"

"He went from here empty-handed."

"Could you describe him to us?"

"He kept on dazzling us with the light of his lantern. All that I could
say is that he is tall and heavily built."

"Is that how he appeared to you, mademoiselle?" asked the magistrate,
turning to Suzanne de Gesvres.

"Yes--or, rather, no," said Suzanne, reflecting. "I thought he was
about the middle height and slender."

M. Filleul smiled; he was accustomed to differences of opinion and
sight in witnesses to one and the same fact:

"So we have to do, on the one hand, with a man, the one in the drawing
room, who is, at the same time, tall and short, stout and thin, and, on
the other, with two men, those in the park, who are accused of removing
from that drawing room objects--which are still here!"

M. Filleul was a magistrate of the ironic school, as he himself would
say. He was also a very ambitious magistrate and one who did not object
to an audience nor to an occasion to display his tactful resource in
public, as was shown by the increasing number of persons who now
crowded into the room. The journalists had been joined by the farmer
and his son, the gardener and his wife, the indoor servants of the
chateau and the two cabmen who had driven the flies from Dieppe.

M. Filleul continued:

"There is also the question of agreeing upon the way in which the third
person disappeared. Was this the gun you fired, mademoiselle, and from
this window?"

"Yes. The man reached the tombstone which is almost buried under the
brambles, to the left of the cloisters."

"But he got up again?"

"Only half. Victor ran down at once to guard the little door and I
followed him, leaving the second footman, Albert, to keep watch here."

Albert now gave his evidence and the magistrate concluded