e suspicion which obtruded itself upon
him. He had not as yet examined very closely the linen which had been
sent from the manor in place of his own. His eyes happened to
fall upon the initials, and he was too surprised to understand the
mysterious allusion of the two letters, being unable to follow the
strange hallucinations of an unhappy lunatic.

"While he was immersed in melancholy reflection, the flax-crusher
entered the room, with his figure as upright as ever but pale as
death. The old man stood up in front of the priest and burst into
tears, exclaiming: 'It is my miserable girl. I ought to have kept a
closer watch over her and have found out what her thoughts were
about, but with her constant melancholy she gave me the slip.' He then
revealed the secret, and within an hour the stolen linen was brought
back to the priest's house. The delinquent had hoped that the scandal
would soon be forgotten, and that she would revel in peace over the
success of her little plot, but the arrest of the clerk's wife and the
sensation which it caused spoilt the whole thing. If her moral sense
had not been entirely obliterated, her first thought would have been
to get the clerk's wife set at liberty, but she paid little or no
heed to that. She was plunged in a kind of stupor which had nothing
in common with remorse, and what so prostrated her was the evident
failure of her attempt to move the feelings of the priest. Most men
would have been touched by the revelation of so ardent a passion, but
the priest was unmoved. He banished all thought of this remarkable
event from his mind, and when he was fully convinced of the imprisoned
woman's innocence he went to sleep, celebrated mass the next morning,
and recited his breviary just as if nothing had happened.

"That a blunder had been committed in arresting this woman then became
painfully evident, as but for this the matter might have been hushed
up. There had been no actual robbery, but after an innocent woman
had been several days in prison on the charge of theft, it was very
difficult to let the real culprit go unpunished. Her insanity was not
self-evident, and it may even be said that there were no outward signs
of it. Up to that time it had never occurred to anyone that she was
insane, for there was nothing singular in her conduct except her
extreme taciturnity. It was easy, therefore, to question her insanity,
while the true explanation of the act was so incredible and so strang