When, about five o’clock, the procession was at an end, Mme. Acquet went through the rose-strewn streets to find her confidante, Rosalie Dupont.  Such was her impatience that she soon left this girl, irresistibly drawn to the road where her own fate and that of her lover were being decided.  Lanoe, who was returning to Glatigny in the evening, was surprised to meet the chatelaine of La Bijude in a little wood near Clair-Tizon.  She was scarcely a league from the place where the men were hidden.  From her secluded spot she could, with beating heart, motionless and mute with anguish, hear the noise of shooting, which rung out clear in the silence of the summer evening.  It was exactly a quarter to eight.

* * * * *

The waggon had, indeed, left Potigny at seven o’clock.  A little way from the village, the road, which had been quite straight for six leagues, descended a low hill at the foot of which is the wood of Quesnay, a low thicket of hazel, topped by a few oaks.  Allain had posted his men along the road under the branches; on the edge of the wood towards Falaise stood Flierle, Le Hericey, and Fleur d’Epine.  Allain himself was with Harel and Coeur-le-Roi, at the end nearest Langannerie.  Grand-Charles and Le Lorault were placed in the middle of the wood at equal distances from these two groups.

The eight men had waited since midday for the appearance of the treasure.  They began to lose patience and spoke of returning to Aubigny for supper when they heard the rumbling of the waggon descending the hill.  It came down rapidly, Gousset not having troubled to put on the brake.  They could hear him shouting to the horses.  Walking on the left of the waggon he drove them by means of a long rope; his little dog trotted beside him.  Vinchon and Morin were, for the moment, left behind by the increased speed of the waggon.  The men at the first and second posts allowed it to pass without appearing; it was now between the two thickets through which the road ran; in a few minutes it attained the edge of the wood near Langannerie, when suddenly, Gousset saw a man in a long greatcoat and top-boots in the middle of the road, with his gun pointed at him; it was Allain.

“Halt, you rascal!” he cried to the carrier.

Two of his companions, attired only in drawers and shirt, with a coloured handkerchief knotted round the head, came out of the wood, shouldered arms and took aim.  With a tremendous effort, Gousset, seized with terror, turned the whole team to the left, and with oaths and blows flung it on to a country road which crossed the main road obliquely a little way from the end of the wood.  But in an instant the three men were upon him; they threw him down and held a gun to his head while two others came out of the wood and seized the horses’ heads.  The struggle was short; they tore off Gousset’s cravat and bound his eyes with it, he was searched and his knife taken, then cuffed, pushed into the wood and promised a ball if he moved.