keeper while his wife helped up the old woman. "Do you mean to show
your claws, Vatel? Accuse persons and arrest them on the highway,
brigand,--that's your domain; but get out of here! A man's house is
his castle."

"I caught her in the act, and your mother must come with me."

"Arrest my mother in my house? You have no right to do it. My house is
inviolable,--all the world knows that, at least. Have you got a
warrant from Monsieur Guerbet, the magistrate? Ha! you must have the
law behind you before you come in here. You are not the law, though
you have sworn an oath to starve us to death, you miserable
forest-gauger, you!"

The fury of the keeper waxed so hot that he was on the point of
seizing hold of the wood, when the old woman, a frightful bit of black
parchment endowed with motion, the like of which can be seen only in
David's picture of "The Sabines," screamed at him, "Don't touch it, or
I'll fly at your eyes!"

"Well, then, undo that pile in presence of Monsieur Brunet," said the
keeper.

Though the sheriff's officer had assumed the indifference that the
routine of business does really give to officials of his class, he
threw a glance at Tonsard and his wife which said plainly, "A bad
business!" Old Fourchon looked at his daughter, and slyly pointed at a
pile of ashes in the chimney. Mam Tonsard, who understood in a moment
from that significant gesture both the danger of her mother-in-law and
the advice of her father, seized a handful of ashes and flung them in