in the moonlight.

"My lord," said the corporal, "have you heard a man run past towards the
barrier within the last few minutes?"

"Towards the barrier? No."

"Have you opened the door to any one?"

"Now, am I in the habit of answering the door myself--"

"I ask your pardon, General, but just now it seems to me that--"

"Really!" cried the Marquis wrathfully. "Have you a mind to try joking
with me? What right have you--?"

"None at all, none at all, my lord," cried the corporal, hastily putting
in a soft answer. "You will excuse our zeal. We know, of course, that a
peer of France is not likely to harbor a murderer at this time of night;
but as we want any information we can get--"

"A murderer!" cried the General. "Who can have been--"

"M. le Baron de Mauny has just been murdered. It was a blow from an axe,
and we are in hot pursuit of the criminal. We know for certain that he
is somewhere in this neighborhood, and we shall hunt him down. By your
leave, General," and the man swung himself into the saddle as he spoke.
It was well that he did so, for a corporal of gendarmerie trained to
alert observation and quick surmise would have had his suspicions at
once if he had caught sight of the General's face. Everything that
passed through the soldier's mind was faithfully revealed in his frank
countenance.

"Is it known who the murderer is?" asked he.

"No," said the other, now in the saddle. "He left the bureau full of
banknotes and gold untouched."

"It was revenge, then," said the Marquis.

"On an old man? pshaw! No, no, the fellow hadn't time to take it, that
was all," and the corporal galloped after his comrades, who were almost
out of sight by this time.

For a few minutes the General stood, a victim to perplexities which need
no explanation; but in a moment he heard the servants returning home,
their voices were raised in some sort of dispute at the cross-roads
of Montreuil. When they came in, he gave vent to his feelings in an
explosion of rage, his wrath fell upon them like a thunderbolt, and all
the echoes of the house trembled at the sound of his voice. In the
midst of the storm his own man, the boldest and cleverest of the
party, brought out an excuse; they had been stopped, he said, by the
gendarmerie at the gate of Montreuil, a murder had been committed, and
the police were in pursuit. In a moment the General's anger vanished,
he said not another word; then, bethinking himself of his own singul