But the other continued:
“Hold your tongue, daddy; there's one who finds it and there's another who returns it. And no one the wiser.”
The farmer was speechless. He understood at last. They accused him of having had the pocketbook brought back by an accomplice, by a confederate.
He tried to protest. The whole table began to laugh.
He could not finish his dinner, and went away amid a chorus of jeers.
He went home indignant, choking with rage, with confusion, the more cast down since with his Norman craftiness he was, perhaps, capable of having done what they accused him of and even of boasting of it as a good trick. He was dimly conscious that it was impossible to prove his innocence, his craftiness being so well known. He felt himself struck to the heart by the injustice of the suspicion.
He began anew to tell his tale, lengthening his recital every day, each day adding new proofs, more energetic declarations and more sacred oaths, which he thought of, which he prepared in his hours of solitude, for his mind was entirely occupied with the story of the string. The more he denied it, the more artful his arguments, the less he was believed.
“Those are liars proofs,” they said behind his back.
He felt this. It preyed upon him and he exhausted himself in useless efforts.
He was visibly wasting away.