He had just recovered from the effects of the heat and resumed his quick pace when he noticed at the foot of a tree a knife, a child’s small knife.  When he picked it up he discovered a thimble and also a needlecase not far away.

Having taken up these objects, he thought:  “I’ll entrust them to the mayor,” and he resumed his journey, but now he kept his eyes open, expecting to find something else.

All of a sudden he stopped short, as if he had struck against a wooden barrier.  Ten paces in front of him lay stretched on her back on the moss a little girl, perfectly nude, her face covered with a handkerchief.  She was about twelve years old.

Meredic advanced on tiptoe, as if he apprehended some danger, and he glanced toward the spot uneasily.

What was this?  No doubt she was asleep.  Then he reflected that a person does not go to sleep naked at half-past seven in the morning under the cool trees.  So, then, she must be dead, and he must be face to face with a crime.  At this thought a cold shiver ran through his frame, although he was an old soldier.  And then a murder was such a rare thing in the country, and, above all, the murder of a child, that he could not believe his eyes.  But she had no wound-nothing save a spot of blood on her leg.  How, then, had she been killed?

He stopped close to her and gazed at her, while he leaned on his stick.  Certainly he must know her, for he knew all the inhabitants of the district; but, not being able to get a look at her face, he could not guess her name.  He stooped forward in order to take off the handkerchief which covered her face, then paused, with outstretched hand, restrained by an idea that occurred to him.

Had he the right to disarrange anything in the condition of the corpse before the official investigation?  He pictured justice to himself as a kind of general whom nothing escapes and who attaches as much importance to a lost button as to the stab of a knife in the stomach.  Perhaps under this handkerchief evidence could be found to sustain a charge of murder; in fact, if such proof were there it might lose its value if touched by an awkward hand.

Then he raised himself with the intention of hastening toward the mayor’s residence, but again another thought held him back.  If the little girl were still alive, by any chance, he could not leave her lying there in this way.  He sank on his knees very gently, a little distance from her, through precaution, and extended his hand toward her foot.  It was icy cold, with the terrible coldness of death which leaves us no longer in doubt.  The letter carrier, as he touched her, felt his heart in his mouth, as he said himself afterward, and his mouth parched.  Rising up abruptly, he rushed off under the trees toward Monsieur Renardet’s house.

He walked on faster than ever, with his stick under his arm, his hands clenched and his head thrust forward, while his leathern bag, filled with letters and newspapers, kept flapping at his side.