Just look at the nice things I've brought her!" and, showing
him the vegetables in her basket, she began to drawl in a sing-song
voice:

"Will you have turnips and leeks? Here's stuff to make broth of the
best! It will make her think of bygone days when she lived with us in
the country!"

"My faith!" thought Father Louis, "if Nichoune opens her mouth!"

Aunt Palmyra was knocking repeatedly at Nichoune's door, but there was
no response.

"Well, what a sleep she's having!"

"Likely enough," replied Father Louis, "considering she was not in bed
till four o'clock!"

All the same, this persistent silence puzzled the innkeeper. He tried
to peep through the keyhole, but the key was in it. Then he quietly
drew a gimlet from his pocket and bored a hole in the door. Aunt
Palmyra watched him smiling: she winked and jogged his elbow.

"Ho, ho, my boy! I'll wager you don't stick at having a look at your
customers this way, when it suits you!"

With the ease of practice the innkeeper glued his eye to the hole he
had just made. He uttered an exclamation:

"Good heavens!"

"What is it?" cried Nichoune's aunt in a tone of alarm. "Is her room
empty?"

"Empty? No! But."...

Father Louis was white as paper. He searched his pocket in feverish
haste, drew from it a screwdriver, rapidly detached the lock, and
rushed into the room, followed by Aunt Palmyra, who bawled:

"Oh, my good lord! Whatever is the matter with her?"

Nichoune was stretched out on her bed, and might have seemed asleep to
an onlooker were it not for two things which at once struck the eye:
her face was all purple, and her arms, sticking straight up in the
air, were terrifyingly white and rigid. Approaching the bed, the
innkeeper and Aunt Palmyra saw that Nichoune's arms were maintained in
this vertical position by means of string tied round her wrists and
fastened to the canopy over the bed.

"She is dead!" cried Father Louis. "This is awful! Good heavens! What
a thing to happen!"

Aunt Palmyra, for all her previous protestations of affection for her
charming niece, did not seem in any way moved by the tragic discovery.
She glanced rapidly round the room without a sign of emotion. This
attitude only lasted a moment. Suddenly she broke out into loud
lamentations uttering piercing cries: she threw herself into an
arm-chair, then sank in a heap on the sofa, then returned to the
table! She was making a regular nuisance of herself. The innkeeper,
scared