"They led us to our separate bedrooms at some little distance apart. I heard the old man make some demur as to his, and a voice replied: 'Manage as you will. There is no other room for you.' Then I heard the door of his chamber shut, and whoever had led him to his room descended. One of the girls had conducted me to my chamber, and she recommended me not to leave my door open, speaking in a tone that expressed an order. "As soon as the girl Martin had left I examined my bed, and was horrified to find on the bolster splashes of blood as big as the bottom of a pail. I went to bed more dead than alive. At the end of about an hour some one entered my room, thinking that I was asleep—I made good pretence that I was so—and searched my pockets, and finding in them no more than the thirty sous, left them there and descended again. "Two or three hours later I heard strokes at the old man's door, and a voice call, 'Get up, it is time.' There was, however, no response. Then those who had made this noise went back below, but returned in half an hour. They knocked again at the door, repeating the words as before. But seeing that the stranger persisted in refusing to reply, they burst in the door. Immediately I heard cries of 'Help! Help!' But soon the victim uttered no more articulate cries, but such as I can only liken to the squeals of a pig that is being killed. During the accomplishment of the crime—that is to say, whilst the unhappy man was uttering these cries of distress—the two Martin girls, aged twenty-eight and thirty, were keeping guard at my door, laughing in fits and singing. I could compare them only to demons from hell. "Next morning I rose late, to give the scoundrels time to conceal their crime, and by this means make it safer for myself. The woman Martin asked me how I had slept and if I had heard anything. I said that I had been sound asleep all night. I was so frightened, that when I had got a hundred paces from the house I ran the rest of my way as hard as my legs could carry me." This self-revelation of abject cowardice and meanness in a young man drew from the judges no comment. It was in the nature of the peasant to be such, and comment would be useless. Only they remarked on Boyer having said nothing of what had occurred to the police or any one else for fourteen years. But this also was characteristic.