a slight movement. Marthe whispered:

"Be quiet."

And she said it in so imperious a tone that he was taken aback.

Before leaving the room, Morestal walked to the window. Bugle-notes
sounded in the distance and he leant out to hear them better.

Marthe at once said to Philippe:

"I came in on chance. I felt that you were seeking an explanation with
your father."

"Yes, I had to."

"About your ideas, I suppose?"

"Yes, I must."

"Your father is ill.... It's his heart.... A fit of anger might prove
fatal ... especially after last night. Not a word, Philippe."

At that moment, Morestal closed the window. He passed in front of them
and then, turning and placing his hand on his son's shoulder, he
murmured, in accents of restrained ardour:

"Do you hear the enemy's bugle, over there? Ah, Philippe, I don't want
it to become a war-song!... But, all the same, if it should ... if it
should!..."

*
* *

At one o'clock on the afternoon of Tuesday the 2nd of September,
Philippe, sitting opposite his father, before the pensive eyes of
Marthe, before the anxious eyes of Suzanne, Philippe, after relating
most minutely his conversation with the dying soldier, declared that he
had heard at a distance the cries of protest uttered by Jorance, the
special commissary.

Having made the declaration, he signed it.

CHAPTER IV

THE ENQUIRIES

The tragedy enacted that night and morning was so harsh, so virulent and
so swift that it left the inmates of the Old Mill as though stunned.
Instead of uniting them in a common emotion, it scattered them, giving
each of them an impression of discomfort and uneasiness.

In Philippe, this took the form of a state of torpor that kept him
asleep until the next morning. He awoke, however, in excellent
condition, but with an immense longing for solitude. In reality, he
shrank from finding himself in the presence of his father and his wife.

He went out, therefore, very early, across the woods and fields, stopped
at an inn, climbed the Ballon de Vergix and did not come home until
lunch-time. He was very calm by then and quite master of himself.

To men like Philippe, men endowed with upright natures and generous
minds, but not prone to waste time in reflecting upon the minor cases of
conscience that arise in daily life, the sense of duty performed
becomes, at critical periods, a sort of standard by which they