of Mulhausen and released because there was not evidence enough to
hold him, and that man was Goliah, old Fouchard's quondam assistant on
his farm at Remilly. When finally the peasant opened his door the
house was searched from top to bottom, but to no purpose; the bird had
flown, the gawky Alsatian, the tow-headed, simple-faced lout whom
General Bourgain-Desfeuilles had questioned the day before at dinner
without learning anything and before whom, in the innocence of his
heart, he had disclosed things that would have better been kept
secret. It was evident enough that the scamp had made his escape by a
back window which was found open, but the hunt that was immediately
started throughout the village and its environs had no results; the
fellow, big as he was, had vanished as utterly as a smoke-wreath
dissolves upon the air.

Maurice thought it best to take Honore away, lest in his distracted
state he might reveal to the spectators unpleasant family secrets
which they had no concern to know.

"_Tonnerre de Dieu!_" he cried again, "it would have done me such good
to strangle him!--The letter that I was speaking of revived all my old
hatred for him."

And the two of them sat down upon the ground against a stack of rye a
little way from the house, and he handed the letter to his cousin.

It was the old story: the course of Honore Fouchard's and Silvine
Morange's love had not run smooth. She, a pretty, meek-eyed,
brown-haired girl, had in early childhood lost her mother, an
operative in one of the factories of Raucourt, and Doctor Dalichamp,
her godfather, a worthy man who was greatly addicted to adopting the