r the bed."

Having shut the door, he went up to the bed and tried to move it; but
it was fixed to the wall, and had not been moved for more than half a
century, apparently. Then the brigadier stooped, and made his uniform
crack. A button had flown off.

"Lenient," he said.

"Yes, brigadier?"

"Come here, my lad, and look under the bed; I am too tall. I will look
after the sideboard."

He got up and waited while his man executed his orders.

Lenient, who was short and stout, took off his kepi, laid himself on his
stomach, and, putting his face on the floor, looked at the black cavity
under the bed, and then, suddenly, he exclaimed:

"All right, here we are!"

"What have you got? The rabbit?"

"No, the thief."

"The thief! Pull him out, pull him out!"

The gendarme had put his arms under the bed and laid hold of something,
and he was pulling with all his might, and at last a foot, shod in
a thick boot, appeared, which he was holding in his right hand. The
brigadier took it, crying:

"Pull! Pull!"

And Lenient, who was on his knees by that time, was pulling at the other
leg. But it was a hard job, for the prisoner kicked out hard, and arched
up his back under the bed.

"Courage! courage! pull! pull!" Senateur cried, and they pulled him with
all their strength, so that the wooden slat gave way, and he came out
as far as his head; but at last they got that out also, and they saw the
terrified and furious face of Polyte, whose arms remained stretched out
under the bed.

"Pull away!" the brigadier kept on exclaiming. Then they heard a strange
noise, and as the arms followed the shoulders, and the hands the arms,
they saw in the hands the handle of a saucepan, and at the end of the
handle the saucepan itself, which contained stewed rabbit.

"Good Lord! good Lord!" the brigadier shouted in his delight, while
Lenient took charge of the man; the rabbit's skin, an overwhelming
proof, was discovered under the mattress, and then the gendarmes
returned in triumph to the village with their prisoner and their booty.

A week later, as the affair had made much stir, Lecacheur, on going
into the mairie to consult the schoolmaster, was told that the shepherd
Severin had been waiting for him for more than an hour, and he found him
sitting on a chair in a corner, with his stick between his legs. When he
saw the mayor, he got up, took off his cap, and said:

"Good-morning, Maitre Cacheux"; and then he remained standing