hat it did not concern him. All that Germain
could learn was that the girl and the child had gone in the direction of
Fourche. He hurried to Fourche: the widow and her lovers had not
returned, nor had Pere Leonard. The servant told him that a young girl
and a child had come there and inquired for him, but that she, not
knowing them, thought it best not to admit them and advised them to go
to Mers.

"Why did you refuse to let them in?" said Germain angrily. "Are you so
suspicious in these parts that you don't open your door to your
neighbor?"

"Oh! bless me!" the servant replied, "in a rich house like this, one
has to keep a sharp lookout. I am responsible for everything when the
masters are away, and I can't open the door to everybody that comes."

"That's a vile custom," said Germain, "and I'd rather be poor than live
in fear like that. Adieu, girl! adieu to your wretched country!"

He inquired at the neighboring houses. Everybody had seen the
shepherdess and the child. As the little one had left Belair
unexpectedly, without being dressed for the occasion, with a torn blouse
and his little lamb's fleece over his shoulders; and as little Marie was
necessarily very shabbily dressed at all times, they had been taken for
beggars. Some one had offered them bread; the girl had accepted a piece
for the child, who was hungry, then she had walked away very fast with
him and had gone into the woods.

Germain reflected a moment, then asked if the farmer from Ormeaux had
not come to Fourche.

"Yes," was the reply; "he rode by on horseback a few minutes after the
girl."

"Did he ride after her?"

"Ah! you know him, do you?" laughed the village innkeeper, to whom he
had applied for information.

"Yes, to be sure; he's a devil of a fellow for running after the girls.
But I don't believe he caught that one; although, after all, if he had
seen her--"

"That's enough, thanks!" And he flew rather than ran to Leonard's
stable. He threw the saddle on Grise's back, leaped upon her, and
galloped away in the direction of the woods of Chanteloube.

His heart was beating fast with anxiety and wrath, the perspiration
rolled down his forehead. He covered Grise's sides with blood, although
the mare, when she found that she was on the way to her stable, did not
need to be urged to go at full speed.

XIV

THE OLD WOMAN

Germain soon found himself at the spot on the edge of the pool where he
had passed the night. The fire