He remained there, at his wit’s end, while his cart continued slowly on its way.

What was he to do?  He would be shot!  They would burn his farm, ruin his district!  What should he do?  What should he do?  How could he hide the body, conceal the fact of his death, deceive the Prussians?  He heard voices in the distance, amid the utter stillness of the snow.  All at once he roused himself, and picking up the helmet he placed it on his victim’s head.  Then, seizing him round the body, he lifted him up in his arms, and thus running with him, he overtook his team, and threw the body on top of the manure.  Once in his own house he would think up some plan.

He walked slowly, racking his brain, but without result.  He saw, he felt, that he was lost.  He entered his courtyard.  A light was shining in one of the attic windows; his maid was not asleep.  He hastily backed his wagon to the edge of the manure hollow.  He thought that by overturning the manure the body lying on top of it would fall into the ditch and be buried beneath it, and he dumped the cart.

As he had foreseen, the man was buried beneath the manure.  Anthony evened it down with his fork, which he stuck in the ground beside it.  He called his stableman, told him to put up the horses, and went to his room.

He went to bed, still thinking of what he had best do, but no ideas came to him.  His apprehension increased in the quiet of his room.  They would shoot him!  He was bathed in perspiration from fear, his teeth chattered, he rose shivering, not being able to stay in bed.

He went downstairs to the kitchen, took the bottle of brandy from the sideboard and carried it upstairs.  He drank two large glasses, one after another, adding a fresh intoxication to the late one, without quieting his mental anguish.  He had done a pretty stroke of work, nom de Dieu, idiot!

He paced up and down, trying to think of some stratagem, some explanations, some cunning trick, and from time to time he rinsed his mouth with a swallow of “fil en dix” to give him courage.

But no ideas came to him, not one.

Towards midnight his watch dog, a kind of cross wolf called “Devorant,” began to howl frantically.  Father Anthony shuddered to the marrow of his bones, and each time the beast began his long and lugubrious wail the old man’s skin turned to goose flesh.

He had sunk into a chair, his legs weak, stupefied, done up, waiting anxiously for “Devorant” to set up another howl, and starting convulsively from nervousness caused by terror.

The clock downstairs struck five.  The dog was still howling.  The peasant was almost insane.  He rose to go and let the dog loose, so that he should not hear him.  He went downstairs, opened the hall door, and stepped out into the darkness.  The snow was still falling.  The earth was all white, the farm buildings standing out like black patches.  He approached the kennel.  The dog was dragging at his chain.  He unfastened it.  “Devorant” gave a bound, then stopped short, his hair bristling, his legs rigid, his muzzle in the air, his nose pointed towards the manure heap.