the village dogs slept. Only the
nightingales, awake, spun out the thrill of their song above the silence
of graves. Jean-Pierre said thickly to his wife--

"What do you think is there?"

He pointed his whip at the tower--in which the big dial of the clock
appeared high in the moonlight like a pallid face without eyes--and
getting out carefully, fell down at once by the wheel. He picked
himself up and climbed one by one the few steps to the iron gate of the
churchyard. He put his face to the bars and called out indistinctly--

"Hey there! Come out!"

"Jean! Return! Return!" entreated his wife in low tones.

He took no notice, and seemed to wait there. The song of nightingales
beat on all sides against the high walls of the church, and flowed back
between stone crosses and flat gray slabs, engraved with words of hope
and sorrow.

"Hey! Come out!" shouted Jean-Pierre, loudly.

The nightingales ceased to sing.

"Nobody?" went on Jean-Pierre. "Nobody there. A swindle of the crows.
That's what this is. Nobody anywhere. I despise it. _Allez! Houp!_"

He shook the gate with all his strength, and the iron bars rattled with
a frightful clanging, like a chain dragged over stone steps. A dog
near by barked hurriedly. Jean-Pierre staggered back, and after three
successive dashes got into his cart. Susan sat very quiet and still. He
said to her with drunken severity--

"See? Nobody. I've been made a fool! _Malheur!_ Somebody will pay for it.
The next one I see near the house I will lay my whip on . . . on the
black spine . . . I will. I don't want him in there . . . he only helps
the carrion crows to rob poor folk. I am a man. . . . We will see if
I can't have children like anybody else . . . now you mind. . . . They
won't be all . . . all . . . we see. . . ."

She burst out through the fingers that hid her face--

"Don't say that, Jean; don't say that, my man!"

He struck her a swinging blow on the head with the back of his hand
and knocked her into the bottom of the cart, where she crouched,
thrown about lamentably by every jolt. He drove furiously, standing
up, brandishing his whip, shaking the reins over the gray horse that
galloped ponderously, making the heavy harness leap upon his broad
quarters. The country rang clamorous in the night with the irritated
barking of farm dogs, that followed the rattle of wheels all along the
road. A couple of belated wayfarers had only just time to step into the
ditch. At his o