somewhere else."

"Yes," the old man added, "as my wife says, we must look somewhere
else."

There was no further sound in the house, and when Petit-Pierre rose the
next morning with the larks, at dawn, being no longer excited by the
extraordinary events of the last two days, he relapsed into the normal
apathy of little peasants of his age, forgot all that had filled his
little head, and thought of nothing but playing with his brothers, and
_being a man_ with the horses and oxen.

Germain tried to forget, too, by plunging into his work again; but he
became so melancholy and so absent-minded that everybody noticed it. He
did not speak to little Marie, he did not even look at her; and yet, if
any one had asked him in which pasture she was, or in what direction she
had gone, there was not an hour in the day when he could not have told
if he had chosen to reply. He had not dared ask his people to take her
on at the farm during the winter, and yet he was well aware that she
must be suffering from poverty. But she was not suffering, and Mere
Guillette could never understand why her little store of wood never grew
less, and how her shed was always filled in the morning when she had
left it almost empty the night before. It was the same with the wheat
and potatoes. Some one came through the window in the loft, and emptied
a bag on the floor without waking anybody or leaving any tracks. The old
woman was anxious and rejoiced at the same time; she bade her daughter
not mention the matter, saying that if people knew what was happening in
her house they would take her for a witch. She really believed that the
devil had a hand in it, but she was by no means eager to fall out with
him by calling upon the cure to exorcise him from her house; she said to
herself that it would be time to do that when Satan came and demanded
her soul in exchange for his benefactions.

Little Marie had a clearer idea of the truth, but she dared not speak to
Germain for fear that he would recur to his idea of marriage, and she
pretended when with him to notice nothing.

XVI

MERE MAURICE

One day, Mere Maurice, being alone in the orchard with Germain, said to
him affectionately: "My poor son, I don't think you're well. You don't
eat as much as usual, you never laugh, and you talk less and less. Has
any one in the house, have we ourselves wounded you, without meaning to
do it or knowing that we had done it?"

"No, mother," replied Germain,