“That cartridge never belonged to me,” said the count.
But as he uttered these words he turned deadly pale, so pale, that his wife came close to him, and looked at him with a glance full of terrible anguish.
“Well?”
He made no reply.
But at that moment such silence was so eloquent, that the countess felt sickened, and whispered to him,—
“Then Cocoleu was right, after all!”
Not one feature of this dramatic scene had escaped M. Galpin’s eye. He had seen on every face signs of a kind of terror; still he made no remark. He took the metal case from the count’s hands, knowing that it might become an important piece of evidence; and for nearly a minute he turned it round and round, looking at it from all sides, and examining it in the light with the utmost attention.
Then turning to the peasants, who were standing respectfully and uncovered close by the door, he asked them,—
“Where did you find this cartridge, my friends?”
“Close by the old tower, where they keep the tools, and where the ivy is growing all over the old castle.”