alf-past six o'clock, to mend this post and to cement
it all alone."

"Monsieur d'Hauteserre had blamed me for not doing it," replied Michu.

"But," said the prosecutor, "if you used that plaster on the post you
must have had a trough and a trowel. Now, if you went to the chateau
to tell Monsieur d'Hauteserre that you had done the work, how do you
explain the fact that Gothard was bringing you more plaster. You
must have passed your farm on your way to the chateau, and you would
naturally have left your tools at home and stopped Gothard."

This overwhelming argument produced a painful silence in the courtroom.

"Come," said the prosecutor, "you had better admit at once that what you
buried was _not a stone post_."

"Do you think it was the senator?" said Michu, sarcastically.

Monsieur de Grandville hereupon demanded that the public prosecutor
should explain his meaning. Michu was accused of abduction and the
concealment of a person, but not of murder. Such an insinuation was
a serious matter. The code of Brumaire, year IV., forbade the public
prosecutor from presenting any fresh count at the trial; he must keep
within the indictment or the proceedings would be annulled.

The public prosecutor replied that Michu, the person chiefly concerned
in the abduction and who, in the interests of his masters, had taken the
responsibility on his own shoulders, might have thought it necessary to
plaster up the entrance of the hiding-place, still undiscovered, where
the senator was now immured.

Pressed with questions, hampered by the presence of Gothard, and brought
into contradiction with himself, Michu struck his fist upon the edge of
the dock with a resounding blow and said: "I have had nothing whatever
to do with the abduction of the senator. I hope and believe his enemies
have merely imprisoned him; when he reappears you'll find out that the
plaster was put to no such use."

"Good!" said de Grandville, addressing the public prosecutor; "you have
done more for my client's cause than anything I could have said."

The first day's session ended with this bold declaration, which
surprised the judges and gave an advantage to the defence. The lawyers
of the town and Bordin himself congratulated the young advocate. The
prosecutor, uneasy at the assertion, feared that he had fallen into some
trap; in fact he was really caught in a snare that was cleverly set for
him by the defence and admirably played off by Gothard. The wits