Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 3).djvu/134

 "it is Pierre Picard, the assassin, who has come to give himself up. Go and find the gendarmes."

He seated himself in the middle of the tavern, calm and unmoved.

Two gendarmes speedily arrived. Pierre Picard recognised them as those who, the evening before, had passed close by the elm in which he had taken refuge. He held out his hands to them silently. They placed handcuffs upon his wrists, and led him to a room at the Mairie, which was to serve provisionally as his dungeon, before he was transferred to the neighbouring city.

When he found himself alone, shut up securely in this prison, the door of which was guarded by two gendarmes, the murderer sank upon his camp bed, and cried with a sort of fierce enjoyment:

"At last I can rest!"