ld find it, please let us know."

Mother Benedict did not reply, as she thought it a very equivocal sort of
answer, but suddenly she exclaimed:

"Oh, here is my husband!"

She was the only one who had seen him, as she was facing the gate.
D'Apreval started and Madame de Cadour nearly fell as she turned round
suddenly on her chair.

A man bent nearly double, and out of breath, stood there, ten yards from
them, dragging a cow at the end of a rope. Without taking any notice of
the visitors, he said:

"Confound it! What a brute!"

And he went past them and disappeared in the cow house.

Her tears had dried quickly as she sat there startled, without a word and
with the one thought in her mind, that this was her son, and D'Apreval,
whom the same thought had struck very unpleasantly, said in an agitated
voice:

"Is this Monsieur Benedict?"

"Who told you his name?" the wife asked, still rather suspiciously.

"The blacksmith at the corner of the highroad," he replied, and then they
were all silent, with their eyes fixed on the door of the cow house, which
formed a sort of black hole in the wall of the building. Nothing could be
seen inside, but they heard a vague noise, movements and footsteps and the
sound of hoofs, which were deadened by the straw on the floor, and soon
the man reappeared in the door, wiping his forehead, and came toward the
house with long, slow strides. He passed the strangers without seeming to
notice them and said to his wife:

"Go and draw me a jug of cider; I am very thirsty."

Then he went back into the house, while his wife went into the cellar and
left the two Parisians alone.

"Let us go, let us go, Henri," Madame de Cadour said, nearly distracted
with grief, and so d'Apreval took her by the arm, helped her to rise, and
sustaining her with all his strength, for he felt that she was nearly
fainting, he led her out, after throwing five francs on one of the chairs.

As soon as they were outside the gate, she began to sob and said, shaking
with grief:

"Oh! oh! is that what you have made of him?"

He was very pale and replied coldly:

"I did what I could. His farm is worth eighty thousand francs, and that is
more than most of the sons of the middle classes have."

They returned slowly, without speaking a word. She was still crying; the
tears ran down her cheeks continually for a time, but by degrees they
stopped, and they went back to Fecamp, where they found Monsieur de Cadour
wa