as though he thought him a fool.  Along the paths of beaten earth or cement which offered no chance for footprints Rouletabille hurried silently.  Around him he noted that the grass of the lawn had not been trodden.  And then he paid no more attention to his steps.  He seemed to study attentively the rosy color in the east, breathing the delicacy of dawning morning in the Isles, amid the silence of the earth, which still slumbered.

Bare-headed, face thrown back, hands behind his back, eyes raised and fixed, he made a few steps, then suddenly stopped as if he had been given an electric shock.  As soon as he seemed to have recovered from that shock he turned around and went a few steps back to another path, into which he advanced, straight ahead, his face high, with the same fixed look that he had had up to the time he so suddenly stopped, as if something or someone advised or warned him not to go further.  He continually worked back toward the house, and thus he traversed all the paths that led from the villa, but in all these excursions he took pains not to place himself in the field of vision from Natacha’s window, a restricted field because of its location just around an abutment of the building.  To ascertain about this window he crept on all-fours up to the garden-edge that ran along the foot of the wall and had sufficient proof that no one had jumped out that way.  Then he went to rejoin Matrena in the veranda.

“No one has come into the garden this morning,” said he, “and no one has gone out of the villa into the garden.  Now I am going to look outside the grounds.  Wait here; I’ll be back in five minutes.”

He went away, knocked discreetly on the window of the lodge and waited some seconds.  Ermolai came out and opened the gate for him.  Matrena moved to the threshold of the little sitting-room and watched Natacha’s door with horror.  She felt her legs give under her, she could not stand up under the diabolic thought of such a crime.  Ah, that arm, that arm! reaching out, making its way, with a little shining phial in its hand.  Pains of Christ!  What could there be in the damnable books over which Natacha and her companions pored that could make such abominable crimes possible?  Ah, Natacha, Natacha! it was from her that she would have desired the answer, straining her almost to stifling on her rough bosom and strangling her with her own strong hand that she might not hear the response.  Ah, Natacha, Natacha, whom she had loved so much!  She sank to the floor, crept across the carpet to the door, and lay there, stretched like a beast, and buried her head in her arms while she wept over her daughter.  Natacha, Natacha, whom she had cherished as her own child, and who did not hear her.  Ah, what use that the little fellow had gone to search outside when the whole truth lay behind this door?  Thinking of him, she was embarrassed lest he should find her in that animalistic posture, and she rose