By way of taking a short cut, he was driving her across the field which had hitherto belonged in common to her sister and herself, and the partition of which he had always postponed. Suddenly he was seized with consternation. A new idea had just flashed like lightning through his mind. It had occurred to him that if he turned her away this field would be cut in two, and that she would take half of it, and perhaps give it to her gallant. The thought froze him, and both nipped his lust and wrath. No; that would be folly. He must not let everything go because a girl had baulked him for once. There was plenty of sport to be had any day; but if a fellow once got hold of some land, the thing was to stick to it.
He said nothing more, but slackened his pace, feeling puzzled as to how he might recall his violent words before he reached his wife. At length he made up his mind.
"Well, I'm not fond of making mischief," he said; "it's your seeming disgust of me that annoys me so. Otherwise, I hardly care to vex Lise, situated as she is."
She fancied that he, too, was afraid of being exposed.
"You may be sure of one thing," she answered; "if you speak, I shall do the same."
"Oh, I'm not afraid of that," he resumed, coolly and quietly. "I shall say you are lying, in revenge, because I caught you." Then, as they were getting near, he concluded, quickly: "So it sha'n't go any further. We must both of us talk it over some other time."
Lise, however, was beginning to feel surprised, unable to understand why Françoise was coming back with Buteau like that. He was explaining that the lazy thing had been sulking behind a hay-stack, down yonder, when suddenly a harsh cry interrupted him, and the matter was forgotten.
"What's that? Who screamed?"
It was a weird cry, a long screaming sigh, like the death-gasp of an animal having its throat cut. It rose up and died away amid the pitiless glare of the sun.