"If Monsieur Lacheneur is ruined, as they say----"

The others laughed heartily.

"Ruined--Monsieur Lacheneur!" they exclaimed in chorus. "How absurd!
He is richer than all of us together. Do you suppose that he has been
stupid enough not to have laid anything aside during all these years? He
has put this money not in grounds, as he pretends, but somewhere else."

"You are saying what is untrue!" interrupted Maurice, indignantly.
"Monsieur Lacheneur left Sairmeuse as poor as he entered it."

On recognizing M. d'Escorval's son, the peasants became extremely
cautious. He questioned them, but could obtain only vague and
unsatisfactory answers. A peasant, when interrogated, will never give
a response which he thinks will be displeasing to his questioner; he is
afraid of compromising himself.

The news he had heard, however, caused Maurice to hasten on still more
rapidly after crossing the Oiselle.

"Marie-Anne marry Chanlouineau!" he repeated; "it is impossible! it is
impossible!"



CHAPTER IX

The Reche, literally translated the "Waste," where Marie-Anne had