it as if it had been a
child--as indeed it was the nearest thing to a child she was to know.
Yves de Cornault was much pleased with his purchase. The dog had been
brought to him by a sailor from an East India merchantman, and the
sailor had bought it of a pilgrim in a bazaar at Jaffa, who had stolen
it from a nobleman's wife in China: a perfectly permissible thing to do,
since the pilgrim was a Christian and the nobleman a heathen doomed to
hell-fire.

Yves de Cornault had paid a long price for the dog, for they were
beginning to be in demand at the French court, and the sailor knew he
had got hold of a good thing; but Anne's pleasure was so great that,
to see her laugh and play with the little animal, her husband would
doubtless have given twice the sum.

*****

So far, all the evidence is at one, and the narrative plain sailing;
but now the steering becomes difficult. I will try to keep as nearly as
possible to Anne's own statements; though toward the end, poor thing....

Well, to go back. The very year after the little brown dog was brought
to Kerfol, Yves de Cornault, one winter night, was found dead at the
head of a narrow flight of stairs leading down from his wife's rooms to
a door opening on the court. It was his wife who found him and gave the
alarm, so distracted, poor wretch, with fear and horror--for his blood
was all over her--that at first the roused household could not make out
what she was saying, and thought she had suddenly gone mad. But there,
sure enough, at the top of the stairs lay her husband, stone dead, and
head foremost, the blood from his wounds dripping down to the steps
below him. He had been dreadfully scratched and gashed about the face
and throat, as if with curious pointed weapons; and one of his legs
had a deep tear in it which had cut an artery, and probably caused his
death. But how did he come there, and who had murdered him?

His wife declared that she had been asleep in her bed, and hearing
his cry had rushed out to find him lying on the stairs; but this was
immediately questioned. In the first place, it was proved that from her
room she could not have heard the struggle on the stairs, owing to the
thickness of the walls and the length of the intervening passage; then
it was evident that she had not been in bed and asleep, since she was
dressed when she roused the house, and her bed had not been slept in.
Moreover, the door at the bottom of the stairs was ajar, and it was
no