The man claimed that he had found it on the road; but, being unable to read, had carried it home and given it to his employer. The news soon became known in the neighborhood; Master Hauchecorne was informed of it. He started out again at once, and began to tell his story, now made complete by the dénouement. He was triumphant. "What made me feel bad," he said, "wasn't so much the thing itself, you understand, but the lying. There's nothing hurts you so much as being blamed for lying." All day long he talked of his adventure; he told it on the roads to people who passed; at the wine-shop to people who were drinking; and after church on the following Sunday. He even stopped strangers to tell them about it. His mind was at rest now, and yet something embarrassed him, although he could not say just what it was. People seemed to laugh while they listened to him. They did not seem convinced. He felt as if remarks were made behind his back. On Tuesday of the next week, he went to market at Goderville, impelled solely by the longing to tell his story. Malandain, standing in his doorway, began to laugh when he saw him coming. Why? He accosted a farmer from Criquetot, who did not let him finish, but poked him in the pit of his stomach, and shouted in his face: "Go on, you old fox!" Then he turned on his heel. Master Hauchecorne was speechless, and more and more disturbed. Why did he call him "old fox"? When he was seated at the table, in Jourdain's Inn, he set about explaining the affair once more. A horse-trader from Montvilliers called out to him:— "Nonsense, nonsense, you old dodger! I know all about your string!" "But they've found the wallet!" faltered Hauchecorne. "None of that, old boy; there's one who finds it, and there's one who carries it back. I don't know just how you did it, but I understand you." The peasant was fairly stunned. He understood at last. He was accused of having sent the wallet back by a confederate, an accomplice. He tried to protest. The whole table began to laugh. He could not finish his dinner, but left the inn amid a chorus of jeers. He returned home, shamefaced and indignant, suffocated by wrath, by confusion, and all the more cast down because, with his Norman cunning, he was quite capable of doing the thing with which he was charged, and even of boasting of it as a shrewd trick. He had a confused idea that his innocence was impossible to establish, his craftiness being so well known. And he was cut to the heart by the injustice of the suspicion. Thereupon he began once more to tell of the adventure, making the story longer each day, adding each time new arguments, more forcible protestations, more solemn oaths, which he devised and prepared in his hours of solitude, his mind being wholly engrossed by the story of the string. The more complicated his defence and the more subtle his reasoning, the less he was believed. "Those are a liar's reasons," people said behind his back.