d had not been touched either.

"Oh!" said Suzanne, trembling all over. "My poor father!... Can
anything have happened to him?... My poor father! I ought to have...."

They stood for a moment as though paralyzed, all three, and incapable of
taking a resolution. The man-servant went out saying that he would
saddle the horse and gallop to the Col du Diable.

Marthe, who was nearest to the telephone, rang up the mayor's office at
Saint-Elophe, on the off-chance, and asked for news. They knew nothing
there. But two gendarmes, it seemed, had just crossed the square at a
great pace. Thereupon, at the suggestion of Mme. Morestal, who had taken
up the second receiver, she asked to be put on to the gendarmery. As
soon as she was connected, she explained her reason for telephoning and
was informed that the sergeant was on his way to the frontier with a
peasant who declared that he had found the body of a man in the woods
between the Butte-aux-Loups and the Col du Diable. That was all they
were able to tell her....

Mme. Morestal let go the receiver and fell in a dead faint. Marthe and
Suzanne tried to attend to her. But their hands trembled and, when
Catherine, the maid-servant, appeared upon the scene, they both ran out
of the room, roused by a sudden energy and an immense need of doing
something, of walking, of laying eyes upon that dead body whose
blood-stained image obsessed their minds.

They went down the stairs of the terrace and scurried in the direction
of the Etang-des-Moines. They had not gone fifty yards, when they were
passed by Victor, who galloped by on horseback and shouted:

"Go in, go in! What's the use? I shall be back again!"

They went on nevertheless. But two roads offered: Suzanne wanted to take
the one leading to the pass, on the left; Marthe, the one on the right,
through the woods. They exchanged sharp words, blocking each other's
way.

Suddenly, Suzanne, without knowing what she was saying, flung herself
into her friend's arms, blurting out:

"I must tell you.... It is my duty.... Besides, it is all my fault...."

Marthe, enraged and not understanding the words, which she was to
remember so clearly later, spoke to her roughly:

"You're quite mad to-day," she said. "Leave me alone, do."

She darted into the woods and, in a few minutes, came to an abandoned
quarry. The path went no further. She had a fit of fury, was on the
verge of throwing herself on the ground and bursting into tears and