After a silence, during which all eyes were turned towards the chimney-corner.
"It would be best to ask Rousille," exclaimed Eléonore, "she must know."
The girl half turning towards the table, her profile standing out in the firelight, answered:
"Of course I do. I met him at the turn of the road by our swing gate; he was going shooting."
"Again!" exclaimed the farmer. "Once for all this must be put a stop to. To-night, when I was tying up my cabbages, the keeper of M. le Marquis reprimanded me for that lad's poaching."
"But is he not free to shoot plovers?" asked Rousille. "Everyone does."
A simultaneous snort proceeding from Eléonore and François marked their hostility to the Boquin, the alien, Rousille's friend.
The farmer, reassured by the reflection that the keeper would not trouble himself about Nesmy's shooting in the neutral ground of the Marais, where anyone was free to go after wild-fowl as much as he pleased, resumed his supper.
François was already nodding, and ate no more.
The cripple drank slowly, his eyes fixed on space, perhaps he was thinking of the time when he, too, loved shooting.