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274 nightfall, another than the waited-for person came to relieve the day-watchman. Giving in once again to his timidity, to the bashfulness that entered his slightest sympathies, Laurent did not dare inquire for the deserter. Moreover, Laurent did not know his name. He would have had to describe him, enter into explanations, and he imagined that his overtures would seem strange. He went home again, but the thought of the absent one tortured him all night, and the horn, blown by another, seemed to call for help and sound an alarm.

The next day, the guard was not at his post. Laurent decided to speak to his substitute.

Then he heard a dismal epilogue.

In flagrant disobedience to all rules, under threat of fine and discharge, at the risk of being found by the travelling inspector, the lover had not quit his mistress. But, one night, they were so tightly enmeshed, so absolutely lost, lips against lips, that he had neither the strength nor the presence of mind to signal a train and bar the crossing. Perhaps he, too, counted upon the utter solitude and loneliness of the road at that late hour! A frightful rattle of distress, followed by a volley of oaths, aroused him from his ecstacy. When he had rushed to the gate, he found that a train had just stopped a few meters away from his post after having crushed an old couple to jelly.

Certain of having to pay dearly for his negligence, the guilty man had not awaited the result of the inquest, but had disappeared while the police and detectives were looking for him. He had so much the more reason for fearing the severities of the law since the two old people killed during that night of love were very rich and very miserly, and their hypocritical