On the bed lay a man, half-dressed, his eyes wide open, fixed upon the
ceiling, his head bound with a cloth, blood-stained. Very sunken was the
head in the pillows, very thin looked the form stretched under the
coarse blanket. Sabatier touched him and then looked swiftly round the
room. A coat was thrown across a chair. He took this up, and there was a
cut in the lining of it, high up near the collar.

"Who did this?" he asked.

The landlord did not know.

"Who did it, I say!" and he struck him in the face with the back of his
hand, a heavy enough blow to send the old man to the wall.

"I do not know, sir, it's true I do not know," whined the landlord.
"They brought him here half dead; had found him on the road, they said.
He seemed to get better when one of them bound him up. When they came to
look at him after you had gone he was dead. I left them alone with him,
and in a few minutes they called me and said they must leave for Paris
at once."

Sabatier flung the coat aside with an oath.

"This is Citizen Latour's business," he said to his companions.

"And he's been helping aristocrats," said one man, pointing to the
landlord still leaning by the wall.

"What else?" said Sabatier, shortly, as he strode out of the room and