m both earlier in the evening. Monsieur Rance had had
tea served him in his room, because he had complained of a slight
indisposition.

Bernier testified, instructed by Rouletabille, that the keeper had
ordered him to meet at a spot near the oak grove, for the purpose of
looking out for poachers. Finding that the keeper did not keep his
appointment, he, Bernier, had gone in search of him. He had almost
arrived at the donjon, when he saw a figure running swiftly in a
direction opposite to him, towards the right wing of the chateau. He
heard revolver shots from behind the figure and saw Rouletabille at one
of the gallery windows. He heard Rouletabille call out to him to fire,
and he had fired. He believed he had killed the man until he learned,
after Rouletabille had uncovered the body, that the man had died from a
knife thrust. Who had given it he could not imagine. "Nobody could have
been near the spot without my seeing him." When the examining magistrate
reminded him that the spot where the body was found was very dark and
that he himself had not been able to recognise the keeper before firing,
Daddy Bernier replied that neither had they seen the other body; nor had
they found it. In the narrow court where five people were standing it
would have been strange if the other body, had it been there, could
have escaped. The only door that opened into the court was that of the
keeper's room, and that door was closed, and the key of it was found in
the keeper's pocket.

However that might be, the examining magistrate did not pursue his
inquiry further in this direction. He was evidently convinced that we
had missed the man we were chasing and we had come upon the keeper's
body in our chase. This matter of the keeper was another matter
entirely. He wanted to satisfy himself about that without any further
delay. Probably it fitted in with the conclusions he had already arrived
at as to the keeper and his intrigues with the wife of Mathieu, the
landlord of the Donjon Inn. This Mathieu, later in the afternoon, was
arrested and taken to Corbeil in spite of his rheumatism. He had been
heard to threaten the keeper, and though no evidence against him had
been found at his inn, the evidence of carters who had heard the threats
was enough to justify his retention.

The examination had proceeded thus far when, to our surprise, Frederic
Larsan returned to the chateau. He was accompanied by one of the
employees of the railway. At that