“See if any one is about,” he said to her, in a voice of some emotion.
“No one,” she replied. “Marianne is in the field with the cow, and Gaucher—”
“Where is Gaucher?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I distrust that little scamp. Go up in the garret, look in the hay-loft, look everywhere for him.”
Marthe left the room to obey the order. When she returned she found Michu on his knees, praying.
“What is the matter?” she said, frightened.
The bailiff took his wife round the waist and drew her to him, saying in a voice of deep feeling: “If we never see each other again remember, my poor wife, that I loved you well. Follow minutely the instructions which you will find in a letter buried at the foot of the larch in that copse. It is enclosed in a tin tube. Do not touch it until after my death. And remember, Marthe, whatever happens to me, that in spite of man’s injustice, my arm has been the instrument of the justice of God.”
Marthe, who turned pale by degrees, became white as her own linen; she looked at her husband with fixed eyes widened by fear; she tried to speak, but her throat was dry. Michu disappeared like a shadow, having tied Couraut to the foot of his bed where the dog, after the manner of all dogs, howled in despair.
Michu’s anger against Monsieur Marion had serious grounds, but it was now concentrated on another man, far more criminal in his eyes,—on Malin, whose secrets were known to the bailiff, he being in a better position than others to understand the conduct of the State Councillor. Michu’s father-in-law had had, politically speaking, the confidence of the former representative to the Convention, through Grevin.