ghastly light on Goliah's distorted features. The fierce efforts he made to scream for mercy, to vociferate the words that were strangling him, were such that the handkerchief knotted across his mouth was drenched with spume, and it was a sight most horrible to see, that strong man reduced to silence, voiceless already as a corpse, about to die with that torrent of excuse and entreaty pent in his bosom.
Cabasse cocked the revolver. 'Shall I let him have it?' he asked.
'No, no!' Sambuc shouted in reply; 'he would be only too glad.' And turning to Goliah: 'You are not a soldier; you are not worthy of the honor of quitting the world with a bullet in your head. No, you shall die the death of a spy and the dirty pig that you are.'
He looked over his shoulder and politely said:
'Silvine, if it's not troubling you too much, I would like to have a tub.'
During the whole of the trial scene Silvine had not moved a muscle. She had stood in an attitude of waiting, with drawn, rigid features, as if mind and body had parted company, conscious of nothing but the one fixed idea that had possessed her for the last two days. And when she was asked for a tub she received the request as a matter of course and proceeded at once to comply with it, disappearing into the adjoining shed, whence she returned with the big tub in which she washed Charlot's linen.
'Hold on a minute! place it under the table, close to the edge.'
She placed the vessel as directed, and as she rose to her feet her eyes again encountered Goliah's. In the look of the poor wretch was a supreme prayer for mercy, the revolt of the man who cannot bear the thought of being stricken down in the pride of his strength. But in that moment there was nothing of the woman left in her; nothing but the fierce desire for that death for which she had been waiting as a deliverance. She retreated again to the buffet, where she remained standing in silent expectation.
Sambuc opened the drawer of the table and took from it a large kitchen knife, the one that the household employed to slice their bacon.
'So, then, as you are a pig, I am going to stick you like a pig.'
He proceeded in a very leisurely manner, discussing with Cabasse, and Ducat the proper method of conducting the operation. They even came near quarreling, because Cabasse alleged that in Provence, the country he came from, they hung pigs up by the heels to stick them, at which Ducat expressed great indignation, declaring that the method was a barbarous and inconvenient one.
'Bring him well forward to the edge of the table, his head over the tub, so as to avoid soiling the floor.'
They drew him forward, and Sambuc went about his task in a tranquil, decent manner. With a single stroke of the keen knife he slit the throat crosswise from ear to ear, and immediately the blood from the severed carotid artery commenced to drip, drip into the tub with the gentle plashing of a fountain. He had taken care not to make the incision too deep; only a few drops spurted from the wound, impelled by the action of the heart. Death was the slower in coming for that, but no convulsion was to be seen, for the cords were strong and the body was utterly incapable of motion. There was no death-rattle, not a quiver of the frame. On the face alone was evidence of the supreme agony, on that terror-distorted mask whence the blood retreated drop by drop, leaving the skin colorless, with a whiteness like that of linen. The expression faded from the eyes; they became dim, the light died from out them.
'Say, Silvine, we shall want a sponge, too.'
She made no reply, standing riveted to the floor in an attitude of unconsciousness, her arms folded tightly across her bosom, her throat constricted as by the clutch of a mailed hand, gazing on the horrible spectacle. Then all at once she perceived that Charlot was there, grasping her skirts with his little hands; he must have awaked and managed to open the intervening doors, and no one had seen him come stealing in, childlike, curious to know what was going on. How long had he been there, half-concealed behind his mother? From beneath his shock of yellow hair his big blue eyes were fixed on the trickling blood, the thin red stream that little by little was filling the tub. Perhaps he had not understood at first and had found something diverting in the sight, but suddenly he seemed to become instinctively aware of all the abomination of the thing; he gave utterance to a sharp, startled cry:
'Oh, mammy! oh, mammy! I'm 'fraid, take me away!'
It gave Silvine a shock, so violent that it convulsed her in every fiber of her being. It was the last straw; something seemed to give way in her, the excitement that had sustained her for the last two days while under the domination of her one fixed idea gave way to horror. It was the resurrection of the dormant woman in her; she burst into tears, and with a frenzied movement caught Charlot up and pressed him wildly to her heart. And she fled with him, running with distracted terror, unable to see or hear more, conscious of but one overmastering need, to find some secret spot, it mattered not where, in which she might cast herself upon the ground and seek oblivion.
It was at this crisis that Jean rose from his bed and, softly opening his door, looked out into the passage. Although he generally gave but small attention to the various noises that reached him from the farmhouse, the unusual activity that prevailed this evening, the trampling of feet, the shouts and cries, in the end excited his curiosity. And it was to the retirement of his sequestered chamber that Silvine, sobbing and disheveled, came for shelter, her form convulsed by such a storm of anguish that at first he could not grasp the meaning of the rambling, inarticulate words that fell from her blanched lips. She kept constantly repeating the same terrified gesture, as if to thrust from before her eyes some hideous, haunting vision. At last he understood, the entire abominable scene was pictured clearly to his mind: the traitorous ambush, the slaughter, the mother, her little one clinging to her skirts, watching unmoved the murdered father, whose life-blood was slowly ebbing; and it froze his marrow-the peasant and the soldier was sick at heart with anguished horror. Ah, hateful, cruel war! that changed all those poor folks to ravening wolves, bespattering the child with the father's blood! An accursed sowing, to end in a harvest of blood and tears!
Resting on the chair where she had fallen, covering with frantic kisses little Charlot, who clung, sobbing, to her bosom, Silvine repeated again and again the one unvarying phrase, the cry of her bleeding heart.
'Ah, my poor child, they will no more say you are a Prussian! Ah, my poor child, they will no more say you are a Prussian!'
Meantime Father Fouchard had returned and was in the kitchen. He had come hammering at the door with the authority of the master, and there was nothing left to do but open to him. The surprise he experienced was not exactly an agreeable one on beholding the dead man outstretched on his table and the blood-filled tub beneath. It followed naturally, his disposition not being of the mildest, that he was very angry.
'You pack of rascally slovens! say, couldn't you have gone outdoors to do your dirty work? Do you take my place for a shambles, eh? coming here and ruining the furniture with such goings-on?' Then, as Sambuc endeavored to mollify him and explain matters, the old fellow went on with a violence that was enhanced by his fears: 'And what do you suppose I am to do with the carcass, pray? Do you consider it a gentlemanly thing to do, to come to a man's house like this and foist a stiff off on him without so much as saying by your leave? Suppose a patrol should come along, what a nice fix I should be in! but precious little you fellows care whether I get my neck stretched or not. Now listen: do you take that body at once and carry it away from here; if you don't, by G-d, you and I will have a settlement! You hear me; take it by the head, take it by the heels, take it any way you please, but get it out of here and don't let there be a hair of it remaining in this room at the end of three minutes from now!'
In the end Sambuc prevailed on Father Fouchard to let him have a sack, although it wrung the old miser's heartstrings to part with it. He selected one that was full of holes, remarking that anything was good enough for a Prussian. Cabasse and Ducat had all the trouble in the world to get Goliah into it; it was too short and too narrow for the long, broad body, and the feet protruded at its mouth. Then they carried their burden outside and placed it on the wheelbarrow that had served to convey to them their bread.
'You'll not be troubled with him any more, I give you my word of honor!' declared Sambuc. 'We'll go and toss him into the Meuse.'
'Be sure and fasten a couple of big stones to his feet,' recommended Fouchard, 'so the lubber shan't come up again.'
And the little procession, dimly outlined against the white waste of snow, started and soon was buried in the blackness of the night, giving no sound save the faint, plaintive creaking of the barrow.
In after days Sambuc swore by all that was good and holy he had obeyed the old man's directions, but none the less the corpse came to the surface and was discovered two days afterward by the Prussians among the weeds at Pont-Maugis, and when they saw the manner of their countryman's murder, his throat slit like a pig, their wrath and fury knew no bounds. Their threats were terrible, and were accompanied by domiciliary visits and annoyances of
