nt his rounds
and inspected the posts. There were no alarms. Old Trainard did not
budge from his hole.

The battle began at break of day.

It lasted four hours.

In those four hours, the thirteen acres of land within the walls were
searched, explored, gone over in every direction by a score of men who
beat the bushes with sticks, trampled over the tall grass, rummaged in
the hollows of the trees and scattered the heaps of dry leaves. And old
Trainard remained invisible.

"Well, this is a bit thick!" growled Goussot.

"Beats me altogether," retorted the sergeant.

And indeed there was no explaining the phenomenon. For, after all, apart
from a few old clumps of laurels and spindle-trees, which were
thoroughly beaten, all the trees were bare. There was no building, no
shed, no stack, nothing, in short, that could serve as a hiding-place.

As for the wall, a careful inspection convinced even the sergeant that
it was physically impossible to scale it.

In the afternoon, the investigations were begun all over again in the
presence of the examining-magistrate and the public-prosecutor's deputy.
The results were no more successful. Nay, worse, the officials looked
upon the matter as so suspicious that they could not restrain their
ill-humour and asked:

"Are you quite sure, Farmer Goussot, that you and your sons haven't been
seeing double?"

"And what about my wife?" retorted the farmer, red with anger. "Did she
see double when the scamp had her by the throat? Go and look at the
marks, if you doubt me!"

"Very well. But then where is the scamp?"

"Here, between those four walls."

"Very well. Then ferret him out. We give it up. It's quite clear, that
if a man were hidden within the precincts of this farm, we should have
found him by now."

"I swear I'll lay hands on him, true as I stand here!" shouted Farmer
Goussot. "It shall not be said that I've been robbed of six thousand
francs. Yes, six thousand! There were three cows I sold; and then the
wheat-crop; and then the apples. Six thousand-franc notes, which I was
just going to take to the bank. Well, I swear to Heaven that the money's
as good as in my pocket!"

"That's all right and I wish you luck," said the examining-magistrate,
as he went away, followed by the deputy and the gendarmes.

The neighbours also walked off in a more or less facetious mood. And, by
the end of the afternoon, none remained but the Goussots and the two
farm-labourers.

Old Gou