to take our measure."

The four men went to the churchyard, which lay at the end of the
village, near the little wood. Everything was as still as death, and
not a soul was to be seen. The sexton was evidently sitting in the
public house, for they found the door of his cottage locked, as well as
the door of the little chapel that stood in the middle of the
churchyard.

"Where is your mother's grave?" the police director asked; but as there
were only a few stars visible, it was not easy to find it, but at last
they managed it, and the police director looked about in the
neighborhood of it.

"The position is not a very favorable one for us," he said at last;
"there is nothing here, not even a shrub, behind which we could hide."

But just then, the policeman said that he had tried to get into the
sexton's hut through the door or the window, and that at last he had
succeeded in doing so by breaking open a square in a window, which had
been mended with paper, and that he had opened it and obtained
posesssion of the key which he brought to the police director.

His plans were very quickly settled. He had the chapel opened and went
in with the young Latitudinarian; then he told the police sergeant to
lock the door behind him and to put the key back where he had found it,
and to shut the window of the sexton's cottage carefully. Lastly, he
made arrangements as to what they were to do in case anything
unforeseen should occur, whereupon the sergeant and the constable left
the churchyard, and lay down in a ditch at some distance from the gate,
but opposite to it.

Almost as soon as the clock struck half-past eleven, they heard steps
near the chapel, whereupon the police director and the young
Latitudinarian went to the window, in order to watch the beginning of
the exorcism, and as the chapel was in total darkness, they thought
that they should be able to see, without being seen; but matters turned
out differently from what they expected.

Suddenly, the key turned in the lock, and they barely had time to
conceal themselves behind the altar before two men came in, one of whom
was carrying a dark lantern. One was the young man's father, an elderly
man of the middle class, who seemed very unhappy and depressed, the
other the Jesuit father K----, a tall, thin, big-boned man, with a
thin, bilious face, in which two large gray eyes shone restlessly under
their bushy black eyebrows. He lit the tapers, which were standing on
the a