"What a lot! what a lot! Did ever any one see such a harvest? What a lot! what a lot!"
His choking laugh sounded like a death-rattle; and his delight must have been altogether internal, for not a trace of it appeared on his rigid face.
"Oh, it's only some of his crazy thoughts that he's sniggering about," Buteau remarked, shrugging his shoulders.
There was now an interval of silence, during which the husband and wife looked at the papers, absorbed in thought.
"Well, what are we to do with them?" Lise murmured, presently. "Oughtn't we to put them back again?"
Buteau made an energetic gesture of refusal.
"Oh, yes, indeed, we must put them back again," his wife protested. "He will look for them, and he will make an outcry if he doesn't find them, and then we shall have a fine row with our swinish relatives."
She now checked herself for the third time, startled by hearing her father sobbing. He seemed to be a prey to some bitter, hopeless grief, for his sobs sounded as though they came from the very depths of his soul. It was impossible to guess what was troubling him, for he only moaned out in a voice that gradually grew more hollow:
"It's all over—all over—all over."
"And do you suppose," Buteau now exclaimed violently, "that I am going to leave these papers in the possession of that old chap who's off his nut, for him to burn them or tear them up? No, indeed."