His blue blouse, fastened round his waist by a black leather belt, moved in a quick, regular fashion above the green hedge of willow trees, and his stout stick of holly kept time with his steady tread.

He crossed the Brindille on a bridge consisting of a tree trunk, with a handrail of rope, fastened at either end to a stake driven into the ground.

The wood, which belonged to Monsieur Renardet, the mayor of Carvelin and the largest landowner in the district, consisted of huge old trees, straight as pillars and extending for about half a league along the left bank of the stream which served as a boundary to this immense dome of foliage.  Alongside the water large shrubs had grown up in the sunlight, but under the trees one found nothing but moss, thick, soft and yielding, from which arose, in the still air, an odor of dampness and of dead wood.

Mederic slackened his pace, took off his black cap adorned with red lace and wiped his forehead, for it was by this time hot in the meadows, though it was not yet eight o’clock in the morning.

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.