wall, from which small columns rose at equal distances united by a
railing, more, however, for ornament than protection, for the bars of
the railing were of painted wood.

The old man, named Pingret, noted for his avarice, lived with a single
woman-servant, a country-girl who did all the work of the house. He
himself took care of his espaliers, trimmed his trees, gathered his
fruit, and sent it to Limoges for sale, together with early vegetables,
in the raising of which he excelled.

The niece of this old man, and his sole heiress, married to a gentleman
of small means living in Limoges, a Madame des Vanneaulx, had again and
again urged her uncle to hire a man to protect the house, pointing out
to him that he would thus obtain the profits of certain uncultivated
ground where he now grew nothing but clover. But the old man steadily
refused. More than once a discussion on the subject had cut into the
whist-playing of Limoges. A few shrewd heads declared that the old miser
buried his gold in that clover-field.

"If I were Madame des Vanneaulx," said a wit, "I shouldn't torment my
uncle about it; if somebody murders him, why, let him be murdered! I
should inherit the money."

Madame des Vanneaulx, however, wanted to keep her uncle, after the
manner of the managers of the Italian Opera, who entreat their popular
tenor to wrap up his throat, and give him their cloak if he happens to
have forgotten his own. She had sent old Pingret a fine English mastiff,
which Jeanne Malassis, the servant-woman brought back the next day
saying:--

"Your uncle doesn't want another mouth to feed."

The result proved how well-founded were the niece's fears. Pingret was
murdered on a dark night, in the middle of his clover-field, where
he may have been adding a few coins to a buried pot of gold. The
servant-woman, awakened by the struggle, had the courage to go to the
assistance of the old miser, and the murderer was under the necessity of
killing her to suppress her testimony. This necessity, which frequently
causes murderers to increase the number of their victims, is an evil
produced by the fear of the death penalty.

This double murder was attended by curious circumstances which told as
much for the prosecution as for the defence. After the neighbors had
missed seeing the little old Pingret and his maid for a whole morning
and had gazed at his house through the wooden railings as they passed
it, and seen that, contrary to custom, the