“Be silent!” the officer shouted in a fury. “I don’t know what it is that keeps me from setting fire to the four corners of your village.”
His anger fortunately kept him from noticing the great change that had come over Françoise’s countenance. Her feelings had compelled her to sit down upon the stone bench beside the well. Do what she would she could not remove her eyes from the body that lay stretched upon the ground, almost at her feet. He had been a tall, handsome young man in life, very like Dominique in appearance, with blue eyes and yellow hair. The resemblance went to her heart. She thought that perhaps the dead man had left behind him in his German home some sweetheart who would weep for his loss. And she recognised her knife in the dead man’s throat. She had killed him.
The officer, meantime, was talking of visiting Rocreuse with some terrible punishment, when two or three soldiers came running in. The guard had just that moment ascertained the fact of Dominique’s escape. The agitation caused by the tidings was extreme. The officer went to inspect the locality, looked out through the still open window, saw at once how the event had happened, and returned in a state of exasperation.
Father Merlier appeared greatly vexed by Dominique’s flight. “The idiot!” he murmured; “he has upset everything.”
Françoise heard him, and was in an agony of suffering. Her father, moreover, had no suspicion of her complicity. He shook his head, saying to her in an undertone:
“We are in a nice box, now!”
“It was that scoundrel! it was that scoundrel!” cried the officer. “He has got away to the woods; but he must be found, or the village shall stand the consequences.” And addressing himself to the miller: “Come, you must know where he is hiding?”
Father Merlier laughed in his silent way, and pointed to the wide stretch of wooded hills.
“How can you expect to find a man in that wilderness?” he asked.