"Alas! monsieur le marquis, your servants were not the only ones in the secret," observed La Caille-Bottée sagaciously; "Monsieur d'Ars's servants may have told; and besides, weren't you looking that night for a man who had escaped and whom you wanted to catch?"
"That is true; he is the only one whom I suspect. I have not come here to reproach you, my friends, but to ask you where, when and how you buried that body."
"Where?" said Jean le Clope, glancing at La Caille-Bottée. "In our garden, and if you want to see the place——"
"I do not care about it. But was it quite dark, or had the day begun to break?"
"It was about—two or three o'clock in the morning," said the lay brother with some hesitation, glancing again at the pock-marked old maid, who seemed to suggest his answers with her eyes.
"And nobody saw you?" said Bois-Doré, watching them both closely.
That question threw the lay brother into confusion, and the marquis detected more significant glances between him and his companion. It was becoming evident to him that they were afraid they had been seen, and that, in their fear of being contradicted by a reliable witness, they dared not go into details concerning the manner in which they had carried out the marquis's wishes.
He rose and repeated the question in an imperative tone.
"Alas! my good lord," said La Caille-Bottée, falling on her knees, "forgive this poor cripple in body and mind, who has probably drunk a little too much to-night, and can't say just what he wants to say!"
"Yes, forgive me, captain," added the veteran, deeply affected apparently by the plight of his own brain, and kneeling in his turn.