Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 3).djvu/128

 saw something glitter about a hundred paces from him.

It was the brass badge and the pommel of a rural policeman's sabre.

"He may have my description," he murmured with a shudder.

And, shrinking back quickly, he ran to a little wood which extended on his left and hid himself in it, pushing further and further into its depths, forgetting his hunger, and thinking only of flying from the village and the rural policeman.

But he speedily reached the end of the wood, which was of very small extent: beyond, the plain began again.

On peering from between the branches, he saw a man seated on the grass eating his breakfast. It was Jacques, the farm labourer.

Nothing could be more pleasant than the corner he had chosen for his breakfast-room. It was a sort of little stony ravine, through which ran two deep wheel-ruts, but carpeted with grass and moss and bordered with creepers, green-leaved, yellow, or purple, according to the caprices of that powerful colourist called Autumn. The wheel-ruts were full of limpid water, at the bottom of which glittered little white stones, smooth and transparent as onyx. Finally, this pretty nest was shaded by a cluster of birch-trees with reddish silvery trunks and foliage light and trembling.

Above this oasis spread ploughed fields on which hung, white and closely woven, the "Virgin-threads," floating and sparkling like an immense silver net.

Jacques' breakfast consisted of a hunch of bread and a piece of cheese, washed down with big draughts of cider claret, which he drank out of a stone pitcher, cooled in the water of the wheel ruts.

The peasant's strong white teeth buried themselves in the bread with an appetite which might have made a capitalist desire to share his frugal meal, which he only interrupted now and then to give a friendly word to his two horses, which, a few paces off, were feeding in brotherly fashion from the same wisp of hay.

"He's happy—he is!" murmured the murderer. Then, from the depths of his conscience he added: "Yes! work!—love of family!—peace and happiness are there!"

He was tempted to accost Jacques and ask him for a piece of bread; but a glance at his tattered dress forbade him showing himself; and then it seemed to him that his features bore the stamp of his crime, and must denounce him to whoever looked upon him.

A sound made him turn his head, and through the branches he saw an old man covered with rags. He walked bent double, a stick in his hand and a canvas bag slung to his neck by a cord. It was a beggar.

The murderer watched him with envious eyes, and again he murmured:

"What would I not give to be in his place! He begs, but he is free; he goes where he pleases in the wide air, in the broad sunlight, with a calm heart, with a tranquil conscience, eating without fear and agony the bread given to him in charity;