d him with old age.

"You hear me!" he shouted. "Therese may drag herself at my feet; but
I will never, never give her to your thief of a son! You'd like it,
wouldn't you? so that folks might mock me all over the district, and so
that you might eat me up as you have eaten up all the others!"

This finish to it all had doubtless appeared to him, confusedly, in a
sudden threatening vision: Antonin being dead, it was Gregoire who would
possess the mill, if he should marry Therese. And he would possess the
moorland also, that enclosure, hitherto left barren with such savage
delight, and so passionately coveted by the farm. And doubtless he would
cede it to the farm as soon as he should be the master. The thought that
Chantebled might yet be increased by the fields which he, Lepailleur,
had withheld from it brought the miller's delirious rage to a climax.

"Your son, I'll send him to the galleys! And you, if you don't go, I'll
throw you out! Be off with you, be off!"

Mathieu, who was very pale, slowly retired before this furious madman.
But as he went off he calmly said: "You are an unhappy man. I forgive
you, for you are in great grief. Besides, I am quite easy, sensible
things always end by taking place."

Again, a month went by. Then, one rainy morning in October, Madame
Lepailleur was found hanging in the mill stable. There were folks at
Janville who related that Lepailleur had hung her there. The truth was
that she had given signs of melancholia ever since the death of Antonin.
Moreover, the life led at the mill was no longer bearable; day by day
the husband and wife reproached one another for their son's death and
their daughter's flight, battling ragefully together like two abandoned
beasts shut up in the same cage. Folks were merely astonished that such
a harsh, avaricious woman should have been willing to quit this life
without taking her goods and chattels with her.

As soon as Therese heard of her mother's death she hastened home,
repentant, and took her place beside her father again, unwilling as she
was that he should remain alone in his two-fold bereavement. At first it
proved a terrible time for her in the company of that brutal old man who
was exasperated by what he termed his bad luck. But she was a girl of
sterling courage and prompt decision; and thus, after a few weeks, she
had made her father consent to her marriage with Gregoire, which, as
Mathieu had said, was the only sensible course. The news g