When Rousille had crossed the courtyard and taken the road to Sallertaine, the farmer, having taken the pot off the fire, left the barn. He found the man sitting in the chimney-corner, pushing together the half-dead twigs that had fallen from the fire-dogs with the points of his sabots. At the far end of the room, Mathurin was moving restlessly about on his crutches, with crimsoned face, utterly unable to keep his nerves under control. He did not speak to his father, did not appear to have heard him enter. But after a minute, as the farmer, bending down, was speaking in a low voice to the man, he exclaimed violently:
"And Rousille, what had you to say to her that kept you so long in the barn?"
Before replying, Toussaint Lumineau followed with his eyes the movements of the unhappy young man, a prey to a species of madness produced by rage and pain, such as was too well known at La Fromentière—since André's departure the paroxysms had become more frequent—and the father was moved to pity. Ignoring the insolence of the question, he said simply:
"Your sister will come back later, Mathurin. Where she has gone I have sent her."
"I am not to know where she is, then?" cried the cripple still more violently. "Everything is hidden from me here, and she is told all!"
At a sign from the farmer the man took out a couple of potatoes with his knife from the saucepan, slipped them into his coat pocket, cut a slice of bread from the loaf on the table, and carrying off his supper, went out into the yard.
The father and son were alone. Toussaint Lumineau, standing erect in the firelight, said:
"On the contrary, you are going to know all, Mathurin. Your brother François refuses to come home to us."
"I thought so."
The cripple had drawn back into a dark corner between the two beds, out of the range of the lamplight; there, as though on the watch for the words spoken, he listened; his trembling hands resting on the crutches shook the bed-curtains.