the gendarmes left him; he dined there, and as it was very hot, rested till three in the afternoon, during which time the waggon stayed in front of the inn unguarded.  It was noticed that the horses were harnessed three hours before starting, and the conclusion was drawn that Gousset did not want to arrive before night at Langannerie, where he would sleep.  In fact, he took his time.  At a quarter past three he started, without escort, as all the men of the brigade of Falaise were employed in the recruiting that took place that day.  As he left the village he chanced to meet Vinchon, gendarme of the brigade of Langannerie, who was returning home on foot with his nephew, a young boy of seventeen, named Antoine Morin.  They engaged in conversation with the carrier, who walked on the left of the waggon, and went with him.  These chance companions were in no hurry, and Gousset did not appear to be in any haste to arrive.  At the last houses of the suburbs he offered some cider; after some hundred yards the gendarme returned the compliment and they stopped at the “Sauvage.”  A league further, another stop was made at the “Vieille Cave.”  Gousset then proposed a game of skittles, which the gendarme and Morin accepted.  It was nearly seven in the evening when they passed Potigny.  The evening was magnificent and the sun still high on the horizon; as they knew they would not see another inn until the next stage was reached, they made a fourth stop there.  At last Gousset and his companions started again; they could now reach Langannerie in an hour, where they would stop for the night.

* * * * *

The evening before, Mme. Acquet de Ferolles, returning to Falaise with Lefebre, had gone to bed more sick with fatigue than drink; however, she had returned to Donnay at dawn in the fear that her absence might awaken suspicion.  This Sunday, the 7th June, was indeed the Fete-Dieu, and she must decorate the wayside altars as she did each year.

Lanoe, who had arrived the evening before from his farm at Glatigny, worked all the morning hanging up draperies, and covering the walls with green branches.  Mme. Acquet directed the arrangements for the procession with feverish excitement, filling baskets with rose leaves, grouping children, placing garlands.  Doubtless her thoughts flew from this flowery fete to the wood yonder, where at this minute the men whom she had incited waited under the trees, gun in hand.  Perhaps she felt a perverse pleasure in the contrast between the hymns sung among the hedges and the criminal anxiety that wrung her.  Did she not confess later that in the confusion of her mind she had not feared to call on God for the success of “her enterprise”?