“Write that down!”

He dictated to him the whole evidence, most minutely and accurately, correcting himself every now and then to substitute a better word, or to improve his style.  When he had read it over he said,—­

“Let us go on, sir.  You were out last night?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Having left the house at eight, you returned only around midnight.”

“After midnight.”

“You took your gun?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where is it?”

With an air of indifference, M. de Boiscoran pointed at it in the corner of the fireplace, and said,—­

“There it is!”

M. Galpin took it up quickly.  It was a superb weapon, double-barrelled, of unusually fine make, and very elegant.  On the beautifully carved woodwork the manufacturer’s name, Clebb, was engraven.

“When did you last fire this gun?” asked the magistrate.

“Some four or five days ago.”

“What for?”

“To shoot some rabbits who infested my woods.”

M. Galpin raised and lowered the cock with all possible care:  he noticed that it was the Remington patent.  Then he opened the chamber, and found that the gun was loaded.  Each barrel had a cartridge in it.  Then he put the gun back in its place, and, pulling from his pocket the leaden cartridge-case which Pitard had found, he showed it to M. de Boiscoran, and asked him,—­

“Do you recognize this?”

“Perfectly!” replied the other.  “It is a case of one of the cartridges which I have probably thrown away as useless.”

“Do you think you are the only one in this country who has a gun by this maker?”

“I do not think it:  I am quite sure of it.”

“So that you must, as a matter of course, have been at a spot where such a cartridge-case as this has been found?”

“Not necessarily.  I have often seen children pick up these things, and play with them.”

The clerk, while he made his pen fly across his paper, could not resist the temptation of making all kinds of faces.  He was too well acquainted with lawyers’ tactics not to understand M. Galpin’s policy perfectly well, and to see how cunningly it was devised to make every fact strengthen the suspicion against M. de Boiscoran.

“It is a close game,” he said to himself.

The magistrate had taken a seat.

“If that is so,” he began again, “I beg you will give me an account of how you spent the evening after eight o’clock:  do not hurry, consider, take your time; for your answers are of the utmost importance.”

M. de Boiscoran had so far remained quite cool; but his calmness betrayed one of those terrible storms within, which may break forth, no one knows when.  This warning, and, even more so, the tone in which it was given, revolted him as a most hideous hypocrisy.  And, breaking out all of a sudden, he cried,—­

“After all, sir, what do you want of me?  What am I accused of?”