Of all the persons who witnessed Baron d’Escorval’s terrible fall, the abbe was the only one who did not despair.

What a learned doctor would not have dared to do, he did.

He was a priest; he had faith. He remembered the sublime saying of Ambroise Pare: “I dress the wound: God heals it.”

After a six months’ sojourn in Father Poignot’s secluded farm-house, M. d’Escorval was able to sit up and to walk about a little, with the aid of crutches.

Then he began to be seriously inconvenienced by his cramped quarters in the loft, where prudence compelled him to remain; and it was with transports of joy that he welcomed the idea of taking up his abode at the Borderie with Marie-Anne.

When the day of departure had been decided upon, he counted the minutes as impatiently as a school-boy pining for vacation.

“I am suffocating here,” he said to his wife. “I am suffocating. Time drags so slowly. When will the happy day come?”

It came at last. During the morning all the articles which they had succeeded in procuring during their stay at the farm-house were collected and packed; and when night came, Poignot’s son began the moving.

“Everything is at the Borderie,” said the honest fellow, on returning from his last trip, “and Mademoiselle Lacheneur bids the baron bring a good appetite.”

“I shall have one, never fear!” responded the baron, gayly. “We shall all have one.”

Father Poignot himself was busily engaged in harnessing his best horse to the cart which was to convey M. d’Escorval to his new home.

The worthy man’s heart grew sad at the thought of the departure of these guests, for whose sake he had incurred such danger. He felt that he should miss them, that the house would seem gloomy and deserted after they left it.

He would allow no one else to perform the task of arranging the mattress comfortably in the cart. When this had been done to his satisfaction, he heaved a deep sigh, and exclaimed:

“It is time to start!”

Slowly he ascended the narrow staircase leading to the loft.

M. d’Escorval had not thought of the moment of parting.

At the sight of the honest farmer, who came toward him, his face crimsoned with emotion to bid him farewell, he forgot all the comforts that awaited him at the Borderie, in the remembrance of the loyal and courageous hospitality he had received in the house he was about to leave. The tears sprang to his eyes.

“You have rendered me a service which nothing can repay, Father Poignot,” he said, with intense feeling. “You have saved my life.”

“Oh! we will not talk of that, Baron. In my place, you would have done the same — neither more nor less.”

“I shall not attempt to express my thanks, but I hope to live long enough to prove that I am not ungrateful.”

The staircase was so narrow that they had considerable difficulty in carrying the baron down; but finally they had him comfortably extended upon his mattress and threw over him a few handsful of straw, which concealed him entirely.

“Farewell, then!” said the old farmer, when the last hand-shake had been exchanged, “or rather au revoir, Monsieur le Baron, Madame, and you, my good cure.”

“All ready?” inquired young Poignot.

“Yes,” replied the invalid.

The cart, driven with the utmost caution by the young peasant, started slowly on its way.

Mme. d’Escorval, leaning upon the abbe’s arm, walked about twenty paces in the rear.

It was very dark, but had it been as light as day the former cure of Sairmeuse might have encountered any of his old parishioners without the least danger of detection.

His hair and his beard had been allowed to grow; his tonsure had entirely disappeared, and his sedentary life had caused him to become much stouter. He was clad like all the well-to-do peasants of the neighborhood, and his face was hidden by a large slouch hat.

He had not felt so tranquil in mind for months. Obstacles which had appeared almost insurmountable had vanished. In the near future he saw the baron declared innocent by impartial judges; he saw himself reinstalled in the presbytery of Sairmeuse.

The recollection of Maurice was the only thing that marred his happiness. Why did he not give some sign of life?

“But if he had met with any misfortune we should have heard of it,” thought the priest. “He has with him a brave man — an old soldier who would risk anything to come and tell us.”

He was so absorbed in these thoughts that he did not observe that Mme. d’Escorval was leaning more and more heavily upon his arm.

“I am ashamed to confess it,” she said at last, “but I can go no farther. It has been so long since I was out of doors that I have almost forgotten how to walk.”

“Fortunately, we are almost there,” replied the priest.

A moment after young Poignot stopped his cart in the road, at the entrance of the little footpath leading to the Borderie.

“Our journey is ended!” he remarked to the baron. Then he uttered a low whistle, like that which he had given a few hours before, to warn Marie-Anne of his arrival.

No one appeared; he whistled again, louder this time; then with all his might — still no response.

Mme. d’Escorval and the abbe had now overtaken the cart.

“It is very strange that Marie-Anne does not hear me,” remarked young Poignot, turning to them. “We cannot take the baron to the house until we have seen her. She knows that very well. Shall I run up and warn her?”

“She is asleep, perhaps,” replied the abbe; “you stay with your horse, my boy, and I will go and wake her.”

Certainly he did not feel the slightest disquietude. All was calm and still; a bright light was shining through the windows of the second story.

Still, when he saw the open door, a vague presentiment of evil stirred his heart.

“What can this mean?” he thought.

There was no light in the lower rooms, and the abbe was obliged to feel for the staircase with his hands. At last he found it and went up. But upon the threshold of the chamber he paused, petrified with horror by the spectacle before him.

Poor Marie-Anne was lying on the floor. Her eyes, which were wide open, were covered with a white film; her black and swollen tongue was hanging from her mouth.

“Dead!” faltered the priest, “dead!”

But this could not be. The abbe conquered his weakness, and approaching the poor girl, he took her hand.

It was icy cold; the arm was rigid as iron.

“Poisoned!” he murmured; “poisoned with arsenic.”

He rose to his feet, and cast a bewildered glance around the room. His eyes fell upon his medicine-chest, open upon the table.

He rushed to it and unhesitatingly took out a vial, uncorked it, and inverted it on the palm of his hand — it was empty.

“I was not mistaken!” he exclaimed.

But he had no time to lose in conjectures.

The first thing to be done was to induce the baron to return to the farm-house without telling him the terrible misfortune which had occurred.

To find a pretext was easy enough.

The priest hastened back to the wagon, and with well-affected calmness told the baron that it would be impossible for him to take up his abode at the Borderie at present, that several suspicious-looking characters had been seen prowling about, and that they must be more prudent than ever, now they could rely upon the kindly intervention of Martial de Sairmeuse.

At last, but not without considerable reluctance, the baron yielded.

“You desire it, cure,” he sighed, “so I obey. Come, Poignot, my boy, take me back to your father’s house.”

Mme. d’Escorval took a seat in the cart beside her husband; the priest watched them as they drove away, and not until the sound of their carriage-wheels had died away in the distance did he venture to go back to the Borderie.

He was ascending the stairs when he heard moans that seemed to issue from the chamber of death. The sound sent all his blood wildly rushing to his heart. He darted up the staircase.

A man was kneeling beside Marie-Anne, weeping bitterly. The expression of his face, his attitude, his sobs betrayed the wildest despair. He was so lost in grief that he did not observe the abbe’s entrance.

Who was this mourner who had found his way to the house of death?

After a moment, the priest divined who the intruder was, though he did not recognize him.

“Jean!” he cried, “Jean Lacheneur!”

With a bound the young man was on his feet, pale and menacing; a flame of anger drying the tears in his eyes.

“Who are you?” he demanded, in a terrible voice. “What are you doing here? What do you wish with me?”

By his peasant dress and by his long beard, the former cure of Sairmeuse was so effectually disguised that he was obliged to tell who he really was.

As soon as he uttered his name, Jean uttered a cry of joy.

“God has sent you here!” he exclaimed. “Marie-Anne cannot be dead! You, who have saved so many others, will save her.”

As the priest sadly pointed to heaven, Jean paused, his face more ghastly than before. He understood now that there was no hope.

“Ah!” he murmured, with an accent of frightful despondency, “fate shows us no mercy. I have been watching over Marie-Anne, though from a distance; and this very evening I was coming to say to her: ‘Beware, sister — be cautious!’”

“What! you knew ——”

“I knew she was in great danger; yes, Monsieur. An hour ago, while I was eating my supper in a restaurant at Sairmeuse, Grollet’s son entered. ‘Is this you, Jean?’ said he. ‘I just saw Chupin hiding near your sister’s house; when he observed me he slunk away.’ I ran here like one crazed. But when fate is against a man, what can he do? I came too late!”

The abbe reflected for a moment.

“Then you suppose that it was Chupin?”

“I do not suppose, sir; I swear that it was he — the miserable traitor!— who committed this foul deed.”

“Still, what motive could he have had?”

Jean burst into one of those discordant laughs that are, perhaps, the most frightful signs of despair.

“You may rest assured that the blood of the daughter will yield him a richer reward than did the father’s. Chupin has been the vile instrument; but it was not he who conceived the crime. You will have to seek higher for the culprit, much higher, in the finest chateau of the country, in the midst of an army of valets at Sairmeuse, in short!”

“Wretched man, what do you mean?”

“What I say.”

And coldly, he added:

“Martial de Sairmeuse is the assassin.” The priest recoiled, really appalled by the looks and manner of the grief-stricken man.

“You are mad!” he said, severely.

But Jean gravely shook his head.

“If I seem so to you, sir,” he replied, “it is only because you are ignorant of Martial’s wild passion for Marie-Anne. He wished to make her his mistress. She had the audacity to refuse this honor; that was a crime for which she must be punished. When the Marquis de Sairmeuse became convinced that Lacheneur’s daughter would never be his, he poisoned her that she might not belong to another.”

Any attempt to convince Jean of the folly of his accusation would have been vain at that moment. No proofs would have convinced him. He would have closed his eyes to all evidence.

“To-morrow, when he is more calm, I will reason with him,” thought the abbe; then, turning to Jean, he said:

“We cannot allow the body of the poor girl to remain here upon the floor. Assist me, and we will place it upon the bed.”

Jean trembled from head to foot, and his hesitation was apparent.

“Very well!” he said, at last, after a severe struggle.

No one had ever slept upon this bed which poor Chanlouineau had destined for Marie-Anne.

“It shall be for her,” he said to himself, “or for no one.”

And it was Marie-Anne who rested there first — dead.

When this sad task was accomplished, he threw himself into the same arm-chair in which Marie-Anne had breathed her last, and with his face buried in his hands, and his elbows supported upon his knees, he sat there as silent and motionless as the statues of sorrow placed above the last resting-places of the dead.

The abbe knelt at the head of the bed and began the recital of the prayers for the dead, entreating God to grant peace and happiness in heaven to her who had suffered so much upon earth.

But he prayed only with his lips. In spite of his efforts, his mind would persist in wandering.

He was striving to solve the mystery that enshrouded Marie-Anne’s death. Had she been murdered? Could it be that she had committed suicide?

This explanation recurred to him, but he could not believe it.

But, on the other hand, how could her death possibly be the result of a crime?

He had carefully examined the room, and he had discovered nothing that betrayed the presence of a stranger.

All that he could prove was, that his vial of arsenic was empty, and that Marie-Anne had been poisoned by the bouillon, a few drops of which were left in the bowl that was standing upon the mantel.

“When daylight comes,” thought the abbe, “I will look outside.”

When morning broke, he went into the garden, and made a careful examination of the premises.

At first he saw nothing that gave him the least clew, and was about to abandon the investigations, when, upon entering the little grove, he saw in the distance a large dark stain upon the grass. He went nearer — it was blood!

Much excited, he summoned Jean, to inform him of the discovery.

“Someone has been assassinated here,” said Lacheneur; “and it happened last night, for the blood has not had time to dry.”

“The victim lost a great deal of blood,” the priest remarked; “it might be possible to discover who he was by following up these stains.”

“I am going to try,” responded Jean. “Go back to the house, sir; I will soon return.”

A child might have followed the track of the wounded man, the blood-stains left in his passage were so frequent and so distinct.

These tell-tale marks stopped at Chupin’s house. The door was closed; Jean rapped without the slightest hesitation.

The old poacher’s eldest son opened the door, and Jean saw a strange spectacle.

The traitor’s body had been thrown on the ground, in a corner of the room, the bed was overturned and broken, all the straw had been torn from the mattress, and the wife and sons of the dead man, armed with pickaxes and spades, were wildly overturning the beaten soil that formed the floor of the hovel. They were seeking the hidden treasures.

“What do you want?” demanded the widow, rudely.

“Father Chupin.”

“You can see very plainly that he has been murdered,” replied one of the sons.

And brandishing his pick a few inches from Jean’s head, he exclaimed:

“And you, perhaps, are the assassin. But that is for justice to determine. Now, decamp; if you do not ——”

Had he listened to the promptings of anger, Jean Lacheneur would certainly have attempted to make the Chupins repent their menaces.

But a conflict was scarcely permissible under the circumstances.

He departed without a word, and hastened back to the Borderie.

The death of Chupin overturned all his plans, and greatly irritated him.

“I had sworn that the vile wretch who betrayed my father should perish by my hand,” he murmured; “and now my vengeance has escaped me. Someone has robbed me of it.”

Then he asked himself who the murderer could be.

“Is it possible that Martial assassinated Chupin after he murdered Marie-Anne? To kill an accomplic............