The notary, making a trumpet with his hands, shouted: ‘Have you got them?’ Hautot Senior did not answer: then, Cæsar, turning to the keeper, said to him: ‘Go and help him then, Joseph. We must keep in line. We shall wait.’

And Joseph, an old trunk of a dry, gnarled man, whose joints all formed protuberances, set out at a quiet pace, and descended the ravine, looking in all the practicable holes with the precautions of a fox. Then suddenly, he called:

‘Come on, come on! There’s an accident happened!’

They all ran and plunged into the reeds. Hautot Senior, on his side, unconscious, holding his stomach with his two hands, between which flowed across his cloth vest, torn by the bullet, long trickles of blood on to the grass. Letting go of his gun to seize the partridge lying dead within reach of his hand, he had dropped the weapon, whose second shot, going off with the fall, had shattered his abdomen. They drew him up from the ditch, they took his clothes off, and they saw a fearful wound from which the intestines protruded. Then, after tying it up as well as they could, they carried him home, and awaited the doctor who had been sent for along with the priest.

When the doctor came, he shook his head gravely, and turning to Hautot Junior who was sobbing on a chair:

‘My poor boy,’ he said, ‘this doesn’t look too well.’

But when the bandaging was finished, the injured man moved his fingers, opened his mouth, then his eyes, looked before him with troubled, haggard looks, then seemed to search in his memory, remember, understand, and he murmured:

‘Jove, that’s the end of it!’

The doctor was holding his hand.

‘No, no! Some days’ rest only. It won’t be anything.’

Hautot went on:

‘That’s the end. Shot in the stomach! I know it all right.’

Then suddenly:

‘I want to speak to my son, if I have time.’

Hautot Junior, in spite of himself, was crying and repeating like a little boy:

‘Daddy, daddy, poor daddy!’

But his father, in a firmer tone, said:

‘Come, don’t cry any more; it isn’t the time for that. I have to speak to you. Sit down there, quite close. It’ll soon be finished, and I’ll be more at ease. The rest of you, leave us alone a minute, please.’

Everybody went out, leaving the son in front of the father.

As soon as they were alone:

‘Listen, my son, you are twenty-four. I can talk to you about things. And besides there is not so much mystery about it as we put into it. You know that your mother has been dead these seven years, isn’t