Everyone in the neighborhood knew this; and yet when Father Chupin was pursued and captured, as he was occasionally, no witness could be found to testify against him.

“He is a hard case,” men said; “and if he had a grudge against anyone, he would be quite capable of lying in ambush and shooting him as he would a squirrel.”

Meanwhile the rider had drawn rein at the inn of the Boeuf Couronne.

He alighted from his horse, and, crossing the square, approached the church.

He was a large man, about fifty years of age, as gnarled and sinewy as the stem of an old grape-vine.  At the first glance one would not have taken him for a scoundrel.  His manner was humble, and even gentle; but the restlessness of his eye and the expression of his thin lips betrayed diabolical cunning and the coolest calculation.

At any other time this despised and dreaded individual would have been avoided; but curiosity and anxiety led the crowd toward him.

“Ah, well, Father Chupin!” they cried, as soon as he was within the sound of their voices; “whence do you come in such haste?”

“From the city.”

To the inhabitants of Sairmeuse and its environs, “the city” meant the country town of the arrondissement, Montaignac, a charming sub-prefecture of eight thousand souls, about four leagues distant.

“And was it at Montaignac that you bought the horse you were riding just now?”

“I did not buy it; it was loaned to me.”

This was such a strange assertion that his listeners could not repress a smile.  He did not seem to notice it, however.

“It was loaned me,” he continued, “in order that I might bring some great news here the quicker.”

Fear resumed possession of the peasantry.

“Is the enemy in the city?” anxiously inquired some of the more timid.

“Yes; but not the enemy you refer to.  This is the former lord of the manor, the Duc de Sairmeuse.”

“Ah! they said he was dead.”

“They were mistaken.”

“Have you seen him?”

“No, I have not seen him, but someone else has seen him for me, and has spoken to him.  And this someone is Monsieur Laugeron, the proprietor of the Hotel de France at Montaignac.  I was passing the house this morning, when he called me.  ‘Here, old man,’ he said, ’do you wish to do me a favor?’ Naturally I replied:  ‘Yes.’  Whereupon he placed a coin in my hand and said:  ’Well! go and tell them to saddle a horse for you, then gallop to Sairmeuse, and tell my friend Lacheneur that the Duc de Sairmeuse arrived here last night in a post-chaise, with his son, Monsieur Martial, and two servants.’”

Here, in the midst of these peasants, who were listening to him with pale cheeks and set teeth, Father Chupin preserved the subdued mien appropriate to a messenger of misfortune.

But if one had observed him carefully, one would have detected an ironical smile upon his lips and a gleam of malicious joy in his eyes.