The old woman, a little hump-backed creature, stood on the sill of the door, with her hands on her hips, darting flashes from her eyes and curses from her foaming lips shrill enough to be heard at Blangy.
"Ha! the villain, 'twas well done! May hell get you! To suspect me of cutting trees!--ME, the most honest woman in the village.To hunt me like vermin! I'd like to see you lose your cursed eyes, for then we'd have peace.You are birds of ill-omen, the whole of you; you invent shameful stories to stir up strife between your master and us."
The keeper allowed the sheriff to bathe his eyes and all the while the latter kept telling him that he was legally wrong.
"The old thief! she has tired us out," said Vatel at last."She has been at work in the woods all night."
As the whole family had taken an active hand in hiding the live wood and putting things straight in the cottage, Tonsard presently appeared at the door with an insolent air."Vatel, my man, if you ever again dare to force your way into my domain, my gun shall answer you," he said."To-day you have had the ashes; the next time you shall have the fire.You don't know your own business.That's enough.Now if you feel hot after this affair take some wine, I offer it to you; and you may come in and see that my old mother's bundle of fagots hadn't a scrap of live wood in it; it is every bit brushwood."
"Scoundrel!" said the keeper to the sheriff, in a low voice, more enraged by this speech than by the smart of his eyes.
Just then Charles, the groom, appeared at the gate of the Grand-I-
Vert.
"What is the matter, Vatel?" he said.
"Ah!" said the keeper, wiping his eyes, which he had plunged wide open into the rivulet to give them a final cleansing."I have some debtors in there that I'll cause to rue the day they saw the light."
"If you take it that way, Monsieur Vatel," said Tonsard, coldly, "you will find we don't want for courage in Burgundy."
Vatel departed.Not feeling much curiosity to know what the trouble was, Charles went up the steps and looked into the house.
"Come to the chateau, you and your otter,--if you really have one," he said to Pere Fourchon.
The old man rose hurriedly and followed him.
"Well, where is it,--that otter of yours?" said Charles, smiling doubtfully.
"This way," said the old fellow, going toward the Thune.
The name is that of a brook formed by the overflow of the mill-race and of certain springs in the park of Les Aigues.It runs by the side of the county road as far as the lakelet of Soulanges, which it crosses, and then falls into the Avonne, after feeding the mills and ponds on the Soulanges estate.
"Here it is; I hid it in the brook, with a stone around its neck."
As he stooped and rose again the old man missed the coin out of his pocket, where metal was so uncommon that he was likely to notice its presence or its absence immediately.
"Ah, the sharks!" he cried."If I hunt otters they hunt fathers-in-
law! They get out of me all I earn, and tell me it is for my good! If it were not for my poor Mouche, who is the comfort of my old age, I'd drown myself.Children! they are the ruin of their fathers.You haven't married, have you, Monsieur Charles? Then don't; never get married, and then you can't reproach yourself for spreading bad blood.