Had it broken naturally?
Maurice, who examined the end of it, exclaimed with horrible imprecations of hatred and vengeance that they had been betrayed—that their enemy had arranged to deliver only a dead body into their hands—that the rope, in short, had been foully tampered with—cut!
CHAPTER XXXI
Chupin had not taken time to sleep, nor scarcely time to drink, since that unfortunate morning when the Duc de Sairmeuse ordered affixed to the walls of Montaignac, that decree in which he promised twenty thousand francs to the person who should deliver up Lacheneur, dead or alive.
“Twenty thousand francs,” Chupin muttered gloomily; “twenty sacks with a hundred pistoles in each! Ah! if I could discover Lacheneur; even if he were dead and buried a hundred feet under ground, I should gain the reward.”
The appellation of traitor, which he would receive; the shame and condemnation that would fall upon him and his, did not make him hesitate for a moment.
He saw but one thing—the reward—the blood-money.
Unfortunately, he had nothing whatever to guide him in his researches; no clew, however vague.
All that was known in Montaignac was that M. Lacheneur’s horse was killed at the Croix d’Arcy.