asy. I kept on before the men, though! It is
a way I have! I never let the men get it before me. All I want is a
chance and a means! And they ate him up--took every trace away except
the bones; and no one knew it, nor no sound of him was ever heard!'
Here she broke into a chuckling fit of the ghastliest merriment which
it was ever my lot to hear and see. A great poetess describes her
heroine singing: 'Oh! to see or hear her singing! Scarce I know which
is the divinest.'

And I can apply the same idea to the old crone--in all save the
divinity, for I scarce could tell which was the most hellish--the
harsh, malicious, satisfied, cruel laugh, or the leering grin, and the
horrible square opening of the mouth like a tragic mask, and the
yellow gleam of the few discoloured teeth in the shapeless gums. In
that laugh and with that grin and the chuckling satisfaction I knew as
well as if it had been spoken to me in words of thunder that my murder
was settled, and the murderers only bided the proper time for its
accomplishment. I could read between the lines of her gruesome story
the commands to her accomplices. 'Wait,' she seemed to say, 'bide your
time. I shall strike the first blow. Find the weapon for me, and I
shall make the opportunity! He shall not escape! Keep him quiet, and
then no one will be wiser. There will be no outcry, and the rats will
do their work!'

It was growing darker and darker; the night was coming. I stole a
glance round the shanty, still all the same! The bloody axe in the
corner, the heaps of filth, and the eyes on the bone heaps and in the
crannies of the floor.

Pierre had been still ostensibly filling his pipe; he now struck a
light and began to puff away at it. The old woman said:

'Dear heart, how dark it is! Pierre, like a good lad, light the lamp!'

Pierre got up and with the lighted match in his hand touched the wick
of a lamp which hung at one side of the entrance to the shanty, and
which had a reflector that threw the light all over the place. It was
evidently that which was used for their sorting at night.

'Not that, stupid! Not that! the lantern!' she called out to him.

He immediately blew it out, saying: 'All right, mother I'll find it,'
and he hustled about the left corner of the room--the old woman saying
through the darkness:

The lantern! the lantern! Oh! That is the light that is most useful to
us poor folks. The lantern was the friend of the revolution! It is the
friend of