"

His blue blouse, fastened round his waist by a black leather belt, moved
in a quick, regular fashion above the green hedge of willow trees, and
his stout stick of holly kept time with his steady tread.

He crossed the Brindille on a bridge consisting of a tree trunk, with a
handrail of rope, fastened at either end to a stake driven into the
ground.

The wood, which belonged to Monsieur Renardet, the mayor of Carvelin and
the largest landowner in the district, consisted of huge old trees,
straight as pillars and extending for about half a league along the left
bank of the stream which served as a boundary to this immense dome of
foliage. Alongside the water large shrubs had grown up in the sunlight,
but under the trees one found nothing but moss, thick, soft and yielding,
from which arose, in the still air, an odor of dampness and of dead wood.

Mederic slackened his pace, took off his black cap adorned with red lace
and wiped his forehead, for it was by this time hot in the meadows,
though it was not yet eight o'clock in the morning.

He had just recovered from the effects of the heat and resumed his quick
pace when he noticed at the foot of a tree a knife, a child's small
knife. When he picked it up he discovered a thimble and also a needlecase
not far away.

Having taken up these objects, he thought: "I'll entrust them to the
mayor," and he resumed his journey, but now he kept his eyes open,
expecting to find something else.

All of a sudden he stopped short, as if he had struck against a wooden
barrier. Ten paces in front of him lay stretched on her back on the moss
a little girl, perfectly nude, her face covered with a handkerchief. She
was about twelve years old.

Meredic advanced on tiptoe, as if he apprehended some danger, and he
glanced toward the spot uneasily.

What was this? No doubt she was asleep. Then he reflected that a person
does not go to sleep naked at half-past seven in the morning under the
cool trees. So, then, she must be dead, and he must be face to face with
a crime. At this thought a cold shiver ran through his frame, although he
was an old soldier. And then a murder was such a rare thing in the
country, and, above all, the murder of a child, that he could not believe
his eyes. But she had no wound-nothing save a spot of blood on her leg.
How, then, had she been killed?

He stopped close to her and gazed at her, while he leaned on his stick.
Certainly he must know her, for he kne