“You kept your money in a hiding place, Madame Blondin, I understand—in a hollow between two of the logs in the wall of the room? Is that so?”
“Yes; it is so!”—Mother Blondin's voice grew shrill again. “But I will find a better place for it, if I ever get it back again! The police are as great thieves as that man! They took it from him, and now they keep it from me!”
“It is here, Madame Blondin,” said the lawyer soothingly, opening a large envelope. “It will be returned to you after the trial. How much was there?”
“I know very well how much!” she shrilled out suspiciously. “You cannot cheat me! I know! There were all my savings, years of savings—there was more than five hundred dollars.”
A little gasp went around the courtroom. Five hundred dollars! It was a fortune! Gossip then had not lied—it had been outdone!
“Now this hiding place, Madame Blondin—you had never told any one about it? Not even your son?”
“No.”
“It would seem then that this man must have known about it in some way. Had you been near it a short time previous to the fight?”
“I told you I had, didn't I? I told Monsieur Dupont all that once.” Mother Blondin was growing unmanageable again. “I went there to put some money in not five minutes before I heard my son call for help.”
“Your son then was not in the room when you went to put this money away?”