“As your Honor desires. Well, it was about eight o’clock, or a little more, and it was growing dark, when I reached the Seille swamps. They were overflowing; and the water was two inches above the stones of the canal. I asked myself how I should get across without spoiling my clothes, when I saw M. de Boiscoran coming towards me from the other side.”
“Are you quite sure it was he?”
“Why, I should think so! I talked to him. But stop, he was not afraid of getting wet. Without much ado, he rolled up his trousers, stuffed them into the tops of his tall boots, and went right through. Just then he saw me, and seemed to be surprised. I was as much so as he was. ‘Why, is it you, sir?’ I said. He replied ‘Yes: I have to see somebody at Brechy.’ That was very probably so; still I said again, ‘But you have chosen a queer way.’ He laughed. ‘I did not know the swamps were overflowed,’ he answered, ‘and I thought I would shoot some snipes.’ As he said this, he showed me his gun. At that moment I had nothing to say; but now, when I think it over, it looks queer to me.”
M. Galpin had written down the statement as fast as it was given. Then he asked,—
“How was M. de Boiscoran dressed?”
“Stop. He had grayish trousers on, a shooting-jacket of brown velveteen, and a broad-brimmed panama hat.”
The count and the countess looked distressed and almost overcome; nor did the mayor and his friend seem to be less troubled. One circumstance in Ribot’s evidence seemed to have struck them with peculiar force,—the fact that he had seen M. de Boiscoran push his trousers inside his boots.
“You can go,” said M. Galpin to the young man. “Let another witness come in.”
The next one was an old man of bad reputation, who lived alone in an old hut two miles from Valpinson. He was called Father Gaudry. Unlike young Ribot, who had shown great assurance, the old man looked humble and cringing in his dirty, ill-smelling rags. After having given his name, he said,—
“It might have been eleven o’clock at night, and I was going through the forest of Rochepommier, along one of the little by-paths”—