k."

Months, years, flowed by; and never did the police discover the
murderers of the lady with the little bag. For years, too, Norine
shuddered every time that anybody knocked too roughly at her door. But
Alexandre did not reappear there. He doubtless feared that corner of
the Rue de la Federation, and remained as it were submerged in the dim
unsoundable depths of the ocean of Paris.

XX

DURING the ten years which followed, the vigorous sprouting of the
Froments, suggestive of some healthy vegetation of joy and strength,
continued in and around the ever and ever richer domain of Chantebled.
As the sons and the daughters grew up there came fresh marriages, and
more and more children, all the promised crop, all the promised swarming
of a race of conquerors.

First it was Gervais who married Caroline Boucher, daughter of a big
farmer of the region, a fair, fine-featured, gay, strong girl, one of
those superior women born to rule over a little army of servants. On
leaving a Parisian boarding-school she had been sensible enough to feel
no shame of her family's connection with the soil. Indeed she loved the
earth and had set herself to win from it all the sterling happiness of
her life. By way of dowry she brought an expanse of meadow-land in
the direction of Lillebonne, which enlarged the estate by some seventy
acres. But she more particularly brought her good humor, her health, her
courage in rising early, in watching over the farmyard, the dairy, the
whole home, like an energetic active housewife, who was ever bustling
about, and always the last to bed.

Then came the turn of Claire, whose marriage with Frederic Berthaud,
long since foreseen, ended by taking place. There were tears of soft
emotion, for the memory of her whom Berthaud had loved and whom he was
to have married disturbed several hearts on the wedding day when the
family skirted the little cemetery of Janville as it returned to the
farm from the municipal offices. But, after all, did not that love of
former days, that faithful fellow's long affection, which in time had
become transferred to the younger sister, constitute as it were another
link in the ties which bound him to the Froments? He had no fortune,
he brought with him only his constant faithfulness, and the fraternity
which had sprung up between himself and Gervais during the many seasons
when they had ploughed the estate like a span of tireless oxen drawing
the same plough. His heart wa