Page:Mauprat (Heinemann).djvu/302

 "My cloak?" I exclaimed. "It was left in the stable."

"And mine, too," said Marcasse. "I have just folded both together and put them on the corn-bin."

"You must have had two, then," replied the servant; "for I am sure I took one off the bed. It was a black cloak, not new."

Mine, as a fact, was lined with red and trimmed with gold lace. Marcasse's was light gray. It could not, therefore, have been one of our cloaks brought up for a moment by the man and then taken back to the stable.

"But, what did you do with it?" said the sergeant.

"My word, sir," replied the fat girl, "I butput [sic] it there, over the arm-chair. You must have taken it while I went to get a candle. I can't see it now."

We searched the room thoroughly; the cloak was not to be found. We pretended that we needed it, not denying that it was ours. The servant unmade the bed in our presence, and then went and asked the man what he had done with it. Nothing could be found either in the bed or in the room; the man had not been upstairs. All the farm-folk were in a state of excitement, fearing that some one might be accused of theft. We inquired if a stranger had not come to Roche-Mauprat, and if he was not still there. When we ascertained that these good people had neither housed nor seen any one, we reassured them about the lost cloak by saying that Marcasse had accidentally folded it with the two others. Then we shut ourselves in the room, in order to explore it at our ease; for it was now almost evident that what I had seen was by no means a ghost, but John Mauprat himself, or a man very like him, whom I had mistaken for John.