seemed to me that it would have been cowardly to accuse him.  I clung to the belief that one of the men in the battue had fired at Edmee by mistake, and that a feeling of fear and shame prevented him from confessing his misadventure.  Marcasse had the courage to go and see all those who had taken part in the hunt, and, with such eloquence as Heaven had granted him, implored them not to fear the penalty for unintentional murder, and not to allow an innocent man to be accused in their stead.  All these efforts were fruitless; from none of the huntsmen did my poor friend obtain a reply which left him any nearer a solution of the mystery that surrounded us.

On being transferred to Bourges, I was thrown into the castle which had belonged to the old dukes of Berry; this was henceforth to be my prison.  It was a great grief to me to be separated from my faithful sergeant.  He would have been allowed to follow me, but he had a presentiment that he would soon be arrested at the suggestion of my enemies (for he persisted in believing that I was the victim of a plot), and thus be unable to serve me any more.  He wished, therefore, to lose no time, and to continue his investigations as long as they “should not have seized his person.”

Two days after my removal to Bourges, Marcasse produced a document which had been drawn up at his instance by two notaries of La Chatre.  It contained the depositions of ten witnesses to the effect that for some days before the attempted assassination, a mendicant friar had been prowling about Varenne; that he had appeared in different places very close together; and, notably, that he had slept at Notre-Dame de Poligny the night before the event.  Marcasse maintained that this monk was John Mauprat.  Two women declared that they had thought they recognised him either as John or Walter Mauprat, who closely resembled him.  But Walter had been found drowned the day after the capture of the keep; and the whole town of La Chatre, on the day when Edmee was shot, had seen the Trappist engaged with the Carmelite prior from morning till night in conducting the procession and services for the pilgrimage of Vaudevant.  These depositions, therefore, so far from being favourable to me, produced a very bad effect, and threw odium on my defence.  The Trappist conclusively proved his alibi, and the prior of the Carmelites helped him to spread a report that I was a worthless villain.  This was a time of triumph for John Mauprat; he proclaimed aloud that he had come to deliver himself up to his natural judges to suffer punishment for his crimes in the past; but no one could think of prosecuting such a holy man.  The fanaticism that he inspired in our eminently devout province was such that no magistrate would have dared to brave public opinion by proceeding against him.  In his own depositions, Marcasse gave an account of the mysterious and inexplicable appearance of the Trappist at Roche-Mauprat, the steps he had taken to obtain