But he looked in vain over the neighboring meadows. He saw neither little Marie nor little Pierre, and yet it was the hour when shepherds are in the fields. There was a large flock in a pasture. He asked of a young boy who tended them whether the sheep belonged to the farm of Ormeaux.
“Yes,” said the child.
“Are you the shepherd? Do boys tend the flocks of the farm, amongst you?”
“No, I am taking care of them today, because the shepherdess went away. She was ill.”
“But have you not a new shepherdess, who came this morning?”
“Yes, surely; but she, too, has gone already.”
“What! gone? Did she not have a child with her?”
“Yes, a little boy who cried. They both went away after they had been here two hours.”
“Went away! Where?”
“Where they came from, I suppose. I didn’t ask them.”
“But why did they go away?” asked Germain, growing more and more uneasy.
“How the deuce do I know?”
“Did they not agree about wages? Yet that must have been settled before.”
“I can tell you nothing about it I saw them come and go, nothing more.”
Germain walked toward the farm and questioned the farmer. Nobody could give him an explanation; but after speaking with the farmer, he felt sure that the girl had gone without saying a word, and had taken the weeping child with her.
“Can they have been ill-treating my son?” cried Germain.
“It was your son, then? How did he happen to be with the little girl? Where do you come from, and what is your name?”
Germain, seeing that after the fashion of the country they were answering him with questions, stamped his foot impatiently, and asked to speak with the master.
The master was away. Usually, he did not spend the whole day when he came to the farm. He was on horseback, and he had ridden off to one of his other farms.
“But, honestly,” said Germain, growing very anxious, “can’t you tell me why this girl left?”
The farmer and his wife exchanged an odd smile. Then the former answered that he knew nothing, and that it was no business of his. All that Germain could learn was that both girl and child had started off toward Fourche. He rushed back to Fourche. The widow and her lovers were still away; so was Father Leonard. The maid told him that a girl and a child had come to ask for him, but that as she did not know them, she did not wish to let them in, and had advised them to go to Mers.
“And why did you refuse to let them in?” said Germain, angrily. “People are very suspicious in this country, where nobody opens the door to a neighbor.”
“But you see,” answered the maid, “in a house as rich as this, I must keep my eyes open. When the master is away, I am responsible for everything, and I cannot open the door to the first person that comes along.”
“It is a bad custom,” said Germain, “and I had rather be poor than to live in constant fear like that. Goodbye to you, young woman, and goodbye to your vile country.”
He made inquiries at the neighboring house. The shepherdess and child had been seen. As the boy had left Belair suddenly, carelessly dressed, with his blouse torn, and his little lambskin over his shoulders, and as little Marie was necessarily poorly clad at all times, they had been taken for beggars. People had offered them bread. The girl had accepted a crust for the child, who was hungry, then she had walked away with him very quickly, and had entered the forest.
Germain thought a minute, then he asked whether the farmer of Ormeaux had not been at Fourche.
“Yes,” they answered, “he passed on horseback a few seconds after the girl.”
“Was he chasing her?”
“Oh, so you understand?” answered the village publican, with a laugh. “Certain it is that he is the devil of a fellow for running after girls. But I don’t believe that he caught her; though, after all, if he had seen her—”
“That is enough, thank you!” And he flew rather than ran to Leonard’s stable. Throwing the saddle on the gray’s back, he leaped upon it, and set off at full gallop toward the wood of Chanteloube.
His heart beat hard with fear and anger; the sweat poured down his forehead; he spurred the mare till the blood came, though the gray needed no pressing when she felt herself on the road to her stable.
XIII
The Old Woman
Germain came soon to the spot where he had passed the night on the border of the pool. The fire was smoking still. An old woman was gathering the remnants of the wood little Marie had piled there. Germain stopped to question her. She was deaf and mistook his inquiries.
“Yes, my son,” said she, “this is the Devil’s Pool. It is an evil spot, and you must not approach it without throwing in three stones with your left hand, while you cross yourself with the right. That drives away the spirits. Otherwise trouble comes to those who go around it.”
“I am not asking about that,” said Germain, moving nearer her, and screaming at the top of his lungs. “Have you seen a girl and a child walking through the wood?”
“Yes,” said the old woman, “a little child was drowned there.”
Germain shook from head to foot; but happily the hag added:
“That happened a long time ago. In memory of the accident they raised a
