"Excuse me, madame, but I've no idea what you mean."
"Didn't you complain to my son last night of a wild boar that had been ravaging your garden?"
"Oh, the boars find so many nuts in the forest this year that they are not inclined to leave it. They have done us no damage up to the present time, thank Heaven."
"But you urged my son to come and take a shot at some boar."
"No, madame, no; I never even spoke of any boar to him."
Overcome with dread and consternation, Marie stood perfectly silent and motionless for a moment. At last she murmured:
"Frederick lied to André. And those bullets—my God!—those bullets, what did he intend to do with them?"
The honest farmer, seeing Madame Bastien's intense anxiety, and thinking to reassure her at least in a measure, said to her:
"I never said anything to M. Frederick about hunting boars, but if you want to find him, I think I know where he is."
"You have seen him, then?"