“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 the keeper’s eyes.  Vatel roared with pain; Tonsard pushed him roughly upon the broken door-steps where the blinded man stumbled and fell, and then rolled nearly down to the gate, dropping his gun on the way.  In an instant the load of sticks was unfastened, and the oak logs pulled out and hidden with a rapidity no words can describe.  Brunet, anxious not to witness this manoeuvre, which he readily foresaw, rushed after the keeper to help him up; then he placed him on the bank and wet his handkerchief in water to wash the eyes of the poor fellow, who, in spite of his agony, was trying to reach the brook.

“You are in the wrong, Vatel,” said Brunet; “you have no right to enter houses, don’t you see?”

The old woman, a little hump-backed creature, stood on the sill of the door, with her hands on her hips, darting flashes from her eyes and curses from her foaming lips shrill enough to be heard at Blangy.

“Ha! the villain, ’twas well done!  May hell get you!  To suspect me of cutting trees!—­me, the most honest woman in the village.  To hunt me like vermin!  I’d like to see you lose your cursed eyes, for then we’d have peace.  You are birds of ill-omen, the whole of you; you invent shameful stories to stir up strife between your master and us.”

The keeper allowed the sheriff to bathe his eyes and all the while the latter kept telling him that he was legally wrong.

“The old thief! she has tired us out,” said Vatel at last.  “She has been at work in the woods all night.”