After two
hours' discussion, their suspicions were fixed on three individuals who
had hitherto borne a shady reputation--a poacher named Cavalle, a fisher
for trails and crayfish named Paquet, and a bullsticker named Clovis.

* * * * *

PART II

The search for the perpetrator of the crime lasted all the summer, but
he was not discovered. Those who were suspected and those who were
arrested easily proved their innocence, and the authorities were
compelled to abandon the attempt to capture the criminal.

But this murder seemed to have moved the entire country in a singular
fashion. There redisquietude, a vague fear, a sensation of mysterious
terror, springing not merely from the impossibility of discovering any
trace of the assassin, but also and above all from that strange finding
of the wooden shoes in front of La Roque's door on the day after the
crime. The certainty that the murderer had assisted at the
investigation, that he was still living in the village without doubt,
left a gloomy impression on people's minds, and appeared to brood over
the neighborhood like an incessant menace.

The wood besides, had become a dreaded spot, a place to be avoided, and
supposed to be haunted.

Formerly, the inhabitants used to come and sit down on the moss at the
feet of the huge tall trees, or walk along the water's edge watching the
trouts gliding under the green undergrowth. The boys used to play bowls,
hide-and-seek and other games in certain places where they had upturned,
smoothed out, and leveled the soil, and the girls, in rows of four or
five, used to trip along holding one another by the arms, and screaming
out with their shrill voices ballads which grated on the ear, and whose
false notes disturbed the tranquil air and set the teeth on edge like
drops of vinegar. Now nobody went any longer under the wide lofty vault,
as if people were afraid of always finding there some corpse lying on
the ground.

Autumn arrived, the leaves began to fall. They fell down day and night,
descended from the tall trees, round and round whirling to the ground;
and the sky could be seen through the bare branches. Sometimes when a
gust of wind swept over the tree-tops, the slow, continuous rain
suddenly grew heavier, and became a storm with a hoarse roar, which
covered the moss with a thick carpet of yellow water that made rather a
squashing sound under the feet. And the almost imperceptible murmur, the