“How was he dressed?”
“As usually. He had light gray trousers, a shooting-jacket of brown velveteen, and a large straw hat.”
“Did he take his gun?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you know where he went?”
But for the respect which he felt for his master’s friends, Anthony would not have answered these questions, which he thought were extremely impertinent. But this last question seemed to him to go beyond all fair limits. He replied, therefore, in a tone of injured self-respect,—
“I am not in the habit of asking my master where he goes when he leaves the house, nor where he has been when he comes back.”
M. Daubigeon understood perfectly well the honorable feelings which actuated the faithful servant. He said to him with an air of unmistakable kindness,—
“Do not imagine, my friend, that I ask you these questions from idle curiosity. Tell me what you know; for your frankness may be more useful to your master than you imagine.”
Anthony looked with an air of perfect stupefaction, by turns at the magistrate and the commonwealth attorney, at Mechinet, and finally at Ribot, who had taken the lines, and tied Caraby to a tree.